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THE WIDOW'S MITE 
AND OTHER 






PHENOMENA 



BY 

ISAAC K. FUNK 



Science, -wlien she has accomplished all her triumphs 
in her order, will still have to go back, when the time 
comes, to assist in building up a new creed by which 
man can live. — John Morley. 

Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared 
to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly 
wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or 
you shall learn nothing. — Thomas Huxley. 

Third Edition 




FUNK i^ WAGNALLS COMPANY 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

MDCCCCXI 



, 



Copyright, 1904 and 1911 
By FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 



Printed in the United States of America 



Third Edition Published February, 191 1 



• CI.A283736 



PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 



Since the publication of ''The Widow's Mite," in 1904, 
some progress has been made in psychic research, especially 
through The English Society for Psychical Research, and The 
American Society for Psychic Research the latter of which 
was organized in New York under the leadership of James 
H. Hyslop, formerly professor of logic in Columbia University. 

Since the issue of the fifst edition of "The Widow's Mite," / 

Richard Hodgson died. Up to the time of his death, Dr. / 

Hodgson was firmly convinced of the spiritistic interpretation 
of a portion of the phenomena. William James, for years 
recognized as the foremost psychologist in America, has also 
passed the " Great Divide." While Professor James was not 
convinced beyond a doubt of the spiritistic hypothesis, yet he 
declared, shortly before his death, that if he had to make a 
choice of explanations, he would be compelled to choose the 
spiritistic explanation as being the more reasonable. Prof. 
Cesare Lombroso, the famous criminologist of Europe, in the 
last few years of his life, was also fully convinced that these 
phenomena in part were of spirit origin. Sir Oliver Lodge has 
recently borne similar testimony, at sundry times, as to his 
own convictions. 

An interesting volume was pubhshed, in 19 10, by Dr. Joseph 
Grasset, under the title "The Marvels Beyond Science." The 
present status of psychic investigation is fairly described in this 
volume, as follows: "The phenomena which at present have 
been redeemed from the domain of occultism, and which con- 
stitute the occultism of yesterday, may be grouped under three 
heads: first, animal magnetism, now known as hypnotism; 
secondly, the involuntary and unconscious movements which 



iv ' PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 

are revealed in turning tables, etc.; thirdly, the sensation of 
subconscious memory, . . . resulting in false divination, hallu- 
cination, and crystallomancy, reminiscences, and false judg- 
ments; fourth, the association of ideas and imaginations which 
are cognizable in the trances of the mediums." 

Dr. Grasset continues wisely as follows: "There is still an- 
other form of occultism to be discussed; there are occult phe- 
nomena which still remain far beyond the range of positive 
science and whose scientific demonstration has not yet been 
accomplished. But it is none the less e\ddent that tliis demon- 
stration is not rationally impossible, and it is reasonable that 
scientific men should investigate these grave questions. It 
is their duty to study them, and we may look forward to the 
moment when certain of these facts will cease to be occult and 
will be recognized, as scientific." Dr. Grasset is right in his 
insistence that these experiments be conducted with rigorous 
methods. 

I have thought it well to add a chapter by Mr. Hereward 
Carrington, in which he explains, at some length, his experi- 
ments last year in America with Mme. Eusapia Palladino, to- 
gether with his present belief regarding her. 
New York, February, 191 1. 



PREFACF 



A YEAR ago a representative of a New York daily came to 
me with a proof slip of a story which he said his paper intended 
to print the next day, saying that the editor desired the proof 
corrected wherein it was in error. The story was entitled " The 
Finding of the Widow's Mite through the Spirit of Henry 
Ward Beecher," or something after that sort. The represen- 
tative was told that the report contained many errors, and that 
its publication was premature, as there had been no opportunity 
to make any exhaustive examination of the facts involved. It 
was earnestly requested that the publication be postponed until 
after the completion of a full investigation. 

The protest was in vain, and the story, as the newspaper 
had it, went to the public and around the world. To end the 
untimely discussion that followed, a note was sent to the press 
promising, if further exploitation of the incident was postponed, 
that when the investigation was ended a true version of the 
story would be given to the public. 

This book is the fulfilment of that promise. In a sense it 
has not been hastily prepared, for it is a growth of a quarter 
of a century or so. Every book should be in a way a biography 
of the author, who progresses to a thought or point, and then 
gives a record of his travels hither. During the past twenty- 
five years I have devoted such time as could be spared from 
multifarious duties to the investigation of psychic phenomena 
—this has been a recreation— keeping a record of the more 
important things seen and heard. Finding myself tied up to 
give to the public this " widow's mite " incident, it seemed that 



vi PREFACE 

it might serve a good purpose to describe as nearly as may be 
what had become to my mind the real psychic problem — a 
problem that is looming to such proportions as certainly to 
justify much attention from many of the best trained of our 
scientists ; it has been my purpose in this book to do my best 
to persuade a larger number of trained scientists to serious, 
persistent, and intelligent efforts to help in the solution of this 
problem. 

As Sir William Crookes says of himself in giving the results 
of his own experience in psychic investigations (see page 328), 
I feel somewhat after my many years of experience like a trav- 
eler who has been long exploring a strange country and has 
some most puzzling stories to tell. The aim has been in the 
preparation of these pages to record those observations in 
as simple and straightforward a manner as possible; but I 
reaUze that not one reader in a score will find it easy to believe 
what is here told, and yet nearly all — I venture to say all who 
know me — would believe me fully in other affairs. I confess 
that some of these experiences are so startling that if they had 
not come within my own vision and hearing, being myself fully 
acquainted with the details of the test conditions imposed, I 
should be strongly tempted to doubt them ; nor even as it is 
would I be sure of the testimony of my own senses were their 
testimony not corroborated by that of expert psychologists and 
other trained scientists. 

Yet here a word of caution : when the facts are admitted to 
be true as here told, the reader must not leap to the conclusion 
that the hypothesis of spiritualism is proved. There are many 
chasms, each miles and miles wide, yet to be bridged or filled. 
Permit me another cautionary word : there is danger — real dan- 
ger — along these lines of investigation. I have seen psychic 
cobwebs — if cobwebs they be — tangle the feet of even intel- 
lectual giants; and the shrewdest experts — to change the 
simile — need to sail these mystic seas with sharp eyes and level 



PREFACE 



VII 



heads, for these seas are almost wholly uncharted, and in sail- 
ing over them at times the ship's compasses exhibit inexplicable 
variations. 

It has seemed to me best to give very freely in Part I. of 
this volume the " talks " of so-called " spirit controls " and other 
" spirits." These talks, as a whole, are to me the most inter- 
esting and puzzling of the entire phenomena, coming as they 
often do from cabinets in which are uneducated mediums, some- 
times mediums who are but little children. These speeches 
are given very freely, that the reader may be able to judge of 
the intellectual caliber of these intelligences. Quite likely they 
will make dull reading to some readers, but they are sure to 
prove interesting to all who care to master this psychic puzzle. 
Some of the wiser sort of talks have been mingled with those 
that are trivial, to enable the reader to judge better both classes. 

There should be, however, a clear understanding of the 
methods used in reporting these utterances. In some cases there 
were jotted down in the darkened room sufBcient words to enable 
me to recall the leading thoughts — at the best it was reporting 
under unusual difficulties. In other cases the memory had to 
be trusted wholly, but usually the talks of both sorts were 
written out immediately afterward. I have a memory that has 
a reputation with editorial associates of being unusually reten- 
tive of thoughts, but it is a wretched verbal memory. The reader 
may rest assured that the thoughts in these reports are the 
" spirits'," but the verbal garb is quite likely at times my own- 
Besides, these talks are almost always condensations ; to con- 
dense is to interpret. In these interpretations the aim has been 
to give with strict accuracy the thittking that runs through 
these strange speeches, and extreme care has been exercised to 
so use words as to make this thinking clear. I again repeat, 
that there may be no mistake, the thoughts are the so-called 
" spirits' " ; the words and style of expression necessarily more 
or less my own. 



viii PREFACE 

Besides, I thought it but fair to submit all of these talks, 
after having written them out, to two of the so-called " spirit 
bands " for corrections. Whatever the source of these strange 
intelligences, whether they are the flaming out, above the 
threshold of consciousness, of some unknown power residing 
within us all to a greater or lesser degree — the subjective mind, 
the subliminal self, or what not — or whether they are, as they 
claim to be, foreign, of one thing we can be sure — they are 
intelhgetices, and as such deserve the courteous treatment that 
we of the press are in the habit of extending to the interviewed. 
Even ghosts should be granted this ghost of a chance to correct 
misquotation and hasty utterance. These two " bands " are the 
most intelligent of those I have encountered. Possibly this fa- 
vorable judgment has been influenced by the fact that one band 
returned the proofs as "wholly correct." The other, whose 
leader I am told was last century " one of the best known of 
the world's clergymen," made a number of comments, some of 
which will be found in Part I. as footnotes, signed "Pastor." 
If these bands are composed truly of spirits — as they claim 
and as their friends claim — then these pages have had a 
unique proofreading — having been approved on the other 
side of the " silent gulf," whatever may be their fate on this 
side. 

It is quite likely that this book would have been issued in 
March had it not been for the strange prophecy (see page 231) 
that it would be so issued. I count it somewhat of a satisfac- 
tion to have proved that if another intelligence can " forecast 
my future," it has not power to dominate my free agency. Pos- 
sibly the prophecy was only a lucky guess. 

That I may present this psychic problem in its full propor- 
tions I have drawn largely upon the investigations of trained 
scientists who have labored in this field of study. The results 
of the labors and conclusions are given of those whose names 
carry weight — all with the hope of so arousing public interest 



PREFACE ix 

as to incite psychologists and physicists to help make an end 
one way or the other of these mysteries. 

The letters from psychologists and other students of psychic 
research which are given in the Appendix will be of interest to 
my more serious readers. These letters are many — some forty 
in all — coming mostly from the universities in various parts of 
the world. They indicate a great variety of thought, compara- 
tively few accepting the spiritualistic hypothesis, yet there are 
some strong names among those who give this hypothesis much 
more than respectful consideration, as the names of Crookes, 
Lodge, James of Harvard, Hyslop, late of Columbia, Wallace, 
and others. Such names must give pause to those who are 
inclined to treat this hypothesis lightly. 

Sir William Crookes opens up a line of startling speculation 
in his provisional explanation of telepathy, which by his special 
permission is given on page 518. If this speculation turns out 
to be true, worlds upon worlds of astounding proportions open 
to science. If I understand correctly Mr. Crookes's table of 
vibrations, the dijfferences between sound, electricity, light, 
;r-rays, and radium are only the differences in the frequency of 
vibrations or waves — those of sound in the coarse atmosphere, 
and those of the others in ether, possibly something higher; 
that is, if an ear were sufficiently sensitive it could hear color, 
hear the beauty of a picture. Radium is vibration up to the 
sixtieth degree or step. 

And now Edison tells us, " It is probable that there are 
rays of vibration in ether set in motion from some unknown 
source, and that these rays make their presence known by their 
action in causing radium to emit or reflect light and heat"; 
that is, that radium is heated and lighted by some sun vastly 
more subtle and potent than is the sun of our solar system. 
The .^r-rays and radium, it is quite likely, are only at the thresh- 
old of a far finer and more potent universe of substances. 

The human body is coarse, made up of slow, sluggish vibra- 



X PREFACE 

tions, but were these vibrations as rapid as those of the ^-rays 
our bodies would be invisible and pass through many solids, 
and were they as rapid as radium they would pass through all 
solids, as Christ's resurrected body passed through the walls 
of the chamber at Jerusalem. Scientists will soon make the 
miracles of Christ elementary. Already they are changing 
their attitude toward what has been regarded as supernatural, 
Hume must be waxing uncomfortable in his grave. Lord Kel- 
vin tells us miracles are common : " Every action of human free 
virill is a miracle to physical, chemical, and mathematical sci- 
ence." If this be true of the free will of us mortals, what is it 
when we come to pass upon the free-will action of the infinite 
One? 

Now I venture a request of every reader who finds profit 
in these pages, that he oecome a member of The Society for 
Psychical Research, paying the annual fee of ;^5, receiving in 
return the reports of the society. If five thousand persons 
will thus join, an additional income of ;^25,ooo will be supplied, 
and this will enable the society to carry on even more effec- 
tively its immensely important work — a work which, if Glad- 
stone's judgment was correct, "is the most important which is 
being done in the world — by far the most important." The 
application for membership, with fee, should be sent to either 
Richard Hodgson, treasurer, 5 Boylston Place, Boston, Mass., 
or The Society for Psychical Research, 19 Buckingham Street, 
Adelphi, W. C, London, England. 

On page 488 I ask those of my readers who have the nerve 
to do it, and care to do it, to join with me in making a series 
of psychic experiments which may, if followed out patiently 
and wisely, lead to definite results. 

A good motto just now for all psychic investigators, bor- 
rowing from our friends of the legal profession, is this : 

"THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND 
NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH." 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY— A Plea for Psychic Research. 3 

The Psychic Riddle; a Great Interrogation Point (3) — Spir- 
itualism a " Suspect " (4) — Truth the Only Safe Thing ; the Uni- 
verse Fireproof (4) — A Gain to Prove Scientifically there are 
"Evil Spirits" (5) — Inviolability of a Soul with Pure Intent (5) 
— A Network of Psychic Nerves (6)— Huxley a Little Child Be- 
fore a Fact ; " I Don't Know " (6) — The Musician on Wagner's 
Level alone Knows Wagner; Appeal to Within (7) — The Next 
a Complex World (8)— Where Lies the Solution of the Psychic 
Problem? (8) — Gladstone's Strong Testimony to Psychic Re- 
search (9) — Rudimentary Faculties (10) — A New Sphinx (11) — 
Spiritualism Still Unexplained (12) — "Don't Throw Away the 
Baby with the Water from the Bath " (12) — Judgment of Alfred 
Russel Wallace and Frederic Myers (13) — Spiritualism a Great, 
Blundering Attempt to Utilize a New Force (13) — Opinions of 
Prof. William James and of The Society for Psychical Research 
(14) — Fraud.'' Yes, but What More? (15) — Denial by Scientists 
Not Conclusive (16) — Increasing Distance from Bible Times 
Makes Faith More and More Difficult (17) — Frederic Myers' 
Remarkable Prediction about Scientists' Future Belief in 
Christ's Resurrection (18). 

PART I.— Hindering Dispositions AND Opinions. 19 

I. — Ways in Which Some Spiritualists Predispose Inves- 
tigators Unfavorably— Hindering Dispositions and 
Opinions. 21 

Too Credulous (21) — Spirit Wires Crossed (22) — Heartless 
Frauds (22)— Luther R. Marsh (23) — Too Ready to Believe in 
the Supernatural : Nothing Supernatural but God (25) — " Fool's 
World " (26) — Subconscious Faculties Often Ignored (27)— Un- 
explained Apparitions (28) — Flippant "Spirit" Talk (28) — Sit- 
tings for Fun Dangerous (29) — " Spirit " Teachings Not Infal- 
lible (31)— "Predigested Thought" (32) — Too Quick to Denounce 
Skeptics (33) — Was This Colonel Robert G. IngersoU? (23) — 
Requirements of Extraordinary Evidence Not Unreasonable (35) 
— Investigation Should be Made Easy (36) — Common Sense 
Suggestions to Mediums (36). 



xii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

2.— Ways in Which Some Non-Spiritualists Predispose 
Themselves Unfavorably— Hindering Dispositions 
AND Opinions. 38 

Endangering Free Agency by " Foreign " Interference (38)— In- 
dividuality Inviolate (39) — Was Christ a Materialized Spirit? 
(40)— A Conflict of "Spirits" (41) — "Subpoena Gabriel" (42) — 
" Thomas Paine's " Bad Memory (44)— A Very Human " Spirit " : 
"You Won't Mind if My Face is Cold?" (46)— Character a 
Growth on Both Sides of the Death Line (47) — Spirit Commun- 
ion a Complicated Transaction (49) — " The Work of Conjurers " 
(50) — " Spirit " Communications Contradictory (54) — A Babel of 
Voices (55) — A " Spirit's " Explanation of These Contradictions 
(56) — " Mediumship Hurtful to the Medium " (57) — " Spirit's " 
Advice to Safeguard Mediums (59) — " The Work of Evil Spirits " 
(60) — A Converted Medium's Warning (63) — " I am the Evil 
One " (64) — " Gone to Consult the Witch of Endor " (66) — Bible 
Teachings on Spirit Communing (67) — Goodness the Best 
Touchstone (68)— Outside Intelligences, Yes, but What? (70) — 
Like Draws Like (71) — "Spiritualism Conclusively Disproved " 
(72) — Great Variety of Mediumistic Frauds (74) — Mediums Ex- 
changing Tests (76) — At Times Much Money Made (77) — 
Beecher's Belief, " There is Something in it " (78) — Draw off 
the Filth, but Find the Pearls (80) — Faith Predisposes the Eye 
to See (Si) — Power of Auto-Suggestion (82) — "Harmonious 
Conditions Necessary " (84) — Faith is Growth of the Inner Na- 
ture ; the Heart Sees (85) — " Leads to Insanity " (87) — Spirit In- 
formation often Inaccurate (88) — Spirit Explains (89) — Require- 
ment of Unusual Testimony (91) — Don't Give the Ghost a Ghost 
of a Chance (91) — Ridicule; Guying Columbus and Stephenson 
(92) — A Corpse " Sassing " Back (93)— "Psychic Intelligence Not 
Beyond the Age ; the Zeitgeist " (95) — A " Lady from Mars " ; a 
Linguistic Curiosity (96)— Suggestive " Spirit Talks " (97) — " We 
have Many Fools Over Here " (99). 

3.— A Letter from Scientists— A Study. xoi 

Professor William James's Experience with Mrs. Piper (loi) — A 
Very Sensitive Spirit (103) — Odd Reason for Failure of a Sdance 
(104) — Thought Waves and Wireless Telegraphy (106) — Contra- 
diction to the Senses Not Positive Proof of Error (107) — God the 
only Supernatural Power (109) — Scientist Wallace : " Spiritual- 
ism Requires no Further Proof" (no) — Beecher's dual Experi- 
ence (no)— How the Bible Made a "Fool" of Newton (112)— 
Scientists Refuse to Believe the Testimony of their Senses (113) 
Sir David Brewster's Curious Self-Contradiction (04)- Back- 
ward Swing from Scientific Materialism (118). 



CONTENTS xiii 



4. — Special " Spirit-Talks " to Clergymen. 120 

A Criticism of the Churches (120) — Skepticism Dominant (121) 
— " Unbelief in Spirit Communication Provincial, not Christian- 
ity " (123) — " Revelation Did Not End with Patmos " (127) — " Gil- 
den, not a Golden Age " (128)—" Why not Two Worlds in the Same 
Space and Time at Work ? " (130) — A Test that Spiritualism Must 
Stand (131) — Exalted Talk, Whence Comes It? (133) — "God's 
Restoring Love Never Ceases toward a Soul " (135) — " Divine 
Justice and Love Manifested in Christ" (136) — " Supreme Good- 
ness is Supreme Helpfulness" (138) — A "Spirit's" Appeal to 
Seek Inspiration Direct (139) — "Christ a Materialized Spirit" 
(142) — Joseph Parker and Commander Booth Claimed to Com- 
municate with their Spirit Wives (144) — A " Spirit " Explains 
why Mediums are Necessary' (147) — God the Soul of the Uni- 
verse (149) — Some " Spirits " seem Profoundly Religious (153). 

PART IL— The Finding of " The Widov\/'s Mite," and Other 

Similar Phenomena. 155 

I. — Detailed History of the Incident. 157 

The Medium and Her Family (158) — The Beecher Inquiry (159) 
— " In a Large Iron Safe, in a Drawer " (160) — Sure Coin was Re- 
turned (161) — Found as Indicated (162) — So Far and no Farther 
(163) — Report from the United States Mint (164)— Strong Affi- 
davits (165) — Important Points (168) — Possible Explanation ; 
Fraud, Coincidence, Subjective Faculties, Spirit Communication 
(169) — If Spirits, Why so Trivial a Thing? (173) — Cross-Exami- 
nation (175) — Questions to Psychologists; Answers from Many 
(176) — Prof. William James' Opinion (178). 

2. — Was This Beecher 's Face? 179 

A Spirit's Explanation (182) — Is This Beecherian Wit? (184). 

3.— Similar Psychic Phenomena. 185 

The Finding of a Lost Receipt by Swedenborg (185) — Im- 
manuel Kant's Testimony (186) — Various Hypotheses Examined 
(189) — The Finding of a Lost Will (193)— The Finding of a 
Promissory Note (194) — Rev. Dr. Savage Finds the Papers of 
His Dead Son (197) — Finding of a Watch (198)— Professor James 
Tells of the Finding of the Bank-book of His Mother-in-Law 
(198). 

4. — The " Talks " of Spirits at the " Mite " Circle : 198 

(i) " The Law of Nature " (199) ; (2) Reincarnation (204). 

5.— Other Phenomena at the " Mite " Circle. 210 

Was This My Arab Guide? (211)— Correct and Incorrect Infor- 
mation (212) — Was This Clairvoyance? (213). 



xiv CONTENTS 

PA( 

PART III.— Typical Psychic Phenomena. 2 

I. — Telepathy— Clairvoyance. 2 

The Remarkable Reading of a Series of Sealed Letters (217) — 
Named the One I Thought the Author, but was not (218) — An 
Extraordinary and Interesting Mixture (220) — Clearly Clairvoy- 
ant, but What Mind does the Reading? (221) — Was This George 
Hepworth.'' (222) — Coincidence in This Case Unthinkable (224) — 
"Only a Cook": Joseph Cook (227) — My Niece's Remarkable 
Series of Successes (228) — A Suicide's Persistent Assertion (230) 
— Whereabouts of a Leaf from Our Family Bible (232) — A 
Mediumistic Trick (235) — Personal Experiences with Margaret 
Fox Kane (237)— A Strangely Mischievous Intelligence : " Not so 
Smart as You Think You Are " (240) — Professor James's Experi- 
ments with Mrs. Piper (241) — Inexplicable Phenomena; James 
Convinced that Mrs. Piper has Supernormal Powers (243) — 
Frederic Myers's Experiences at His Own Home (246) — Con- 
vinced of Mrs. Piper's Honesty (249) — Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage 
Believes in Mrs. Piper (251) — Dr. Savage's Daughter's Experi- 
ence (253) — The Doctor has Exact Spirit Reports of Absent 
Friends (254) — Sir William Crookes Proves Ability to See With- 
out Eyes (256) — Closed Books Read (258)— Burning of a House 
Described by a Spirit through a Friend (259) — Remarkable 
Verification of the Earth History of Two Spirits (262-66) — An 
Amazing Premonition (267) — Oliver Wendell Holmes Experi- 
ences a Singular Coincidence (270) — Alfred Russel Wallace 
Gives a Series of Clairvoyant Experiences (272) — " The Rector 
Magnificus " of the University of Leipsic Corrects an Injustice 
to Professor Zollner (276) — Zollner Gives the Reading of the 
Date of a Coin in a Sealed Box (276)— Thought-Reading Will 
Not Explain These Wonders (278)— Zollner Doubly Surprised 
(280) — Podmore Reasons Loosely (281) — The Views of Scientists 
Revolutionized about Telepathy in Twenty Years (283) — Sir 
Oliver Lodge's Report to The Society for Psychical Research 
on Thought Transference (284) — Series of Extraordinary Re- 
sults (291). 

2.— Clairaudience. 31 

Socrates's Spirit Guide (310)— " Six Bells— Janette Lost" (311) 
— Two Persons in Brooklyn Hear at the Same Time the Voice 
of a Brother in Texas (311) — Wife Hears Words of Her 
Wounded Husband 150 Miles Distant (314) — A Doctor Hears 
Distant Call for Help (315) — Mother and Sister Hear Drowning 
Boy's Cry, Thousands of Miles Away (316). 

3.— Display of Psychic Force Independent of Muscular 

Action. 3 

Guffaw That Greeted Sir William Crookes's Psychic Experi- 



CONTENTS XY 

PAGE 

ments (319) — Crookes's Statement of His Purpose (321) — He 
Secures Amazing Results {y^) — His Formal Report of Four 
Years' Inquiry in " Phenomena Called Spiritual " (328) — Various 
Classes of Extraordinary Phenomena Which He Witnessed (330) 
— Crookes Sees " Phantom Forms and Faces " (338) — He Sees a 
Bell Come Through a Closed Door (341) — He Sees a Man Rest- 
ing in the Air (343) — The Scientist, Lord Lindsay, Reports a 
Marvel (346) — Professor ZoUner's Experiments at Leipsic (349) 
— A Display of Force Equalling that of Two Horses (350) — Many 
Scientists Unfair to Zollner (357) — Knots in Endless Bands (359) 
— A Table Disappears and Reappears (363) — Alfred Russel Wal- 
lace's Psychic Experiments in His Own Home (364) — " Impos- 
sible," Yet True (367) — Dr. O. B. Frothingham Tells of Himself 
and Six Other Men Lifted with a Piano (368) — My Brother 
Secures Writing on a Doubly Sealed Slate (369) — A Remarkable 
Experiment through Zollner (371) — A Careful Test (376)~Slate- 
writing Often Fraudulent; Thomson Jay Hudson Has Strange 
Success (377)— Hudson's Inconclusive Reasoning (378). 

4. — Apparitions. 380 

Are There Ghosts? (380) — Have Some Living Persons Power to 
Visit at a Distance from Their Bodies? (381) — An Astounding 
Fact of Distinct Visitation Analyzed by Premier Balfour's Sister 
(383) — Curious Success at Self-Projection (387) — Do the Dead 
Reappear? (391) — An Experience in My Father's Family (391) — 
Lord Brougham's Vision of a Dead Friend (392) — Many Cases 
Told by The Society for Psychical Research (395) — Alfred Rus- 
sel Wallace's Reasoning from Effect of Ghosts on Animals (398). 

5.— Secondary Personalities — Obsessions. 402 

Dr. Weir Mitchell's Striking Story (403)— The Case of Mollie 
Fancher (407) — The Celebrated " Watseka Wonder" (408) — Dr. 
Richard Hodgson, Treasurer, Boston, S. P. R., Thinks it a Case 
of " Spirits " (408)— Crookes Sees Materializations : His astound- 
ing Series of Letters (413)— Crookes's Experiments with Ma- 
terializations in His Own Locked Room (416) — He is Fully 
Convinced That There is No Fraud (422) — A Business Friend 
Reports to Me Test Investigations (424) — My Brother's Careful 
Experiments to Verify Materializations (424) — My Own Experi- 
ence in My own Chosen Room (425) — Professor Zollner Sees 
Prints of Spirit Hands and Feet on Sooted Paper, etc., under 
Severe Test Conditions (429) — Frederic Myers's Explanation of 
Genuine Materializations (435). 

6.— Spirit Identity— The Crucial Test of Spiritualism. 442 
A Spirit Claiming to be My Mother Tries to Identify Herself 
(442) — Rev. Dr. Savage Gives a Forceful Case of Identification 



xvi CONTENTS 



PjaGB 



(443)— Dr. Hudson's Explanation (446)— A Good Case by Rev. 
W. Stainton-Moses (446)— Dr. Savage Tells of Relief of the 
Poor by Spirits (446)— George Pelham Case of S. P. R. (449). 

7.— Spirit Photography. .^j 

Alfred Russel Wallace's Photographic Experiences (454)— A 
Business Friend Makes Series of Remarkable Tests (454)— Dr. 
W. J. Pierce's Investigations (457)— Series of Pictures Without 
Camera (458)— Photographs between Two Plates (462)— Rev. Dr. 
J. T. Wills, San Francisco, Makes His Own Spirit Photo (463) 
—Dr. Pierce Makes Pictures Alone in Unopened Box (474)— 
Dr. H. A. Reid of S. P. R. Investigates Spirit Photos (478). 

Addenda — Spirit Identity. .g- 

Attempted Identification of Spirits by Handwriting (484)— Sir 
Oliver Lodge Thinks Identification of Frederic Myers Prob- 
able (485)— Spirit Autograph of Leading Clergyman Thought 
Genuine by New York Bank Experts (485)— Professor Hyslop 
Obtains Proofs of Spirit Identity (486)— Threefold Request to 
the Public (488)— A Prayer— Who is Its Author.? (490). 

APPENDIX. ^gj 

I.— Comments by Psychologists and Other Scholars on 

THE Finding of "The Widow's Mite." 493 

2.— Sir William Crookes' Provisional Explanation of 

Telepathy. .jg 

3.— How to Personally Test Spiritualism; Advice by 

Rev. Wm. Stainton-Moses, M.A. (Oxon.). 520 

4.— An Account of Eusapia Palla'dino's American 

Seances. . 523 

5.— Bibliography— (Partial). 545 



INTRODUCTORY 

A Plea for Psychic Research 



" * The great field for new discoveries,' said a scientific 
friend to me the other day, ' is always the unclassified resid- 
uum.' Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every 
science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional ob- 
servations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met 
with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to at- 
tend to. . . . Only the born geniuses let themselves be worried 
and fascinated by these outstanding exceptions, and get no 
peace till they are brought within the fold. Your Galileos, 
Galvanis, Fresnels, Purkinjes, and Darwins are always get- 
ting confounded and troubled with insignificant things. Any 
one will renovate his science who will steadily look after the 
irregular phenomena. And when the science is renewed, its 
new formulas often have more of the voice of the exceptions in 
them than of what were supposed to be the rules. No part of 
the unclassified residuum has been treated usually with a more 
contemptuous scientific disregard than the mass of phenomena 
generally called mystical."— WILLIAM JAMES, Professor of 
Psychology Harvard University, " Will to Believe;," pp. 299- 
300. 



INTRODUCTORY 



A PLEA FOR PSYCHIC RESEARCH 

" Science is bound by the everlasting law of honor to face fearlessly 
every problem which can be fairly presented to it." — Sir William 
Thojnson. ' 

In the making of this book I have set before me a very 
simple task — to some of my friends it seems a foolish one. 
I do not say, " Columbus was willing to be laughed at as a 
fool, and discovered America," for I am not attempting to 
discover anything ; but am attempting to state clearly a prob- 
lem and to urge others, better qualified, to the discovery 
of its solution. 

It is my purpose to tell what others and I under careful 
test conditions have seen and heard ; many of the others are 
well-equipped, trained observers. I have not thought to 
pass upon these facts or to attempt an explanation, but I 
wish to urge as forcefully as I can upon the scientific mind 
of the world what to me is a profound riddle. After an in- 
vestigation that has spread over many years, I 
place right here a great interrogation point. T»-HrtT 
Now I wish to press for an answer, or at least 
help so to arouse the public mind as to compel a patient, 
systematic investigation by trained scientists far beyond any 
heretofore undertaken. Are not the verified facts sufficient 
to justify competent scientists to try generalization } Not 

' Address before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1871. 

3 



4 A "SUSPECT" 

being such a one I do not make the attempt, I simply tell 
what I do know, and sit at the feet of the learned ones of 
earth and again and again ask the question, " What is it? " 

There are thousands of well- verified psychic facts — many 
verified by such competent scientific physicists as Alfred 
Russel Wallace, Sir William Crookes, and Sir Oliver Lodge, 
and the eminent psychologist and physiologist Prof. Charles 
Richet of Paris — recorded in books so easily accessible it 
is necessary for me to give here only typical ones of the 
different classes together with a number that I myself have 
witnessed. 

To the large majority of scientists and of the general 
public Spiritualism is a " suspect " ; on the other hand, too 
many justify the maxim, It is not hard to fool a man who is 
willing to be fooled. There is need for this double-barreled 
caution : Do not be afraid overmuch of being fooled, nor 
undermuch, for we may be as greatly deceived by believing 
too little as by believing too much. The worst kind of 
credulity is sometimes seen in incredulity. 

The only credit I claim for myself is the courage to say, 
" I don't know," as I stand in the presence of the substantial 
and ever-increasing unexplained remainder of psychic phe- 
nomena — that which remains after the severest winnowing, 
by every reasonable test for coincidence and fraud. 

Not a few persons, some of whom are scholars of reputa- 
tion, have thought it worth while to write me during the 
past year in order to warn me of the great danger of such an 
investigation. A new truth is always accompanied with an 
element of danger; so the birth of a child, but to prevent 
that birth would be fatal. But are we not exaggerating this 
danger ? Truth is the safe thing ; error alone 

«^^ m,^ ^^ is dangerous. God has made the universe, as 
Safe Thing'. .... 

it has been wittily said, fireproof, and hence 
permits man the matchbox to play with — fireproof on both 
sides of the ribbon line we call death. The universe is one 
infinite eye. There is a restraining and directing hand 



"EVIL SPIRITS" 5 

everywhere. We need not fear; God, in weaving His plan 
throughout the ages, has never dropped a thread, nor is He 
dropping one now. 

A surprisingly large number of letters warn me against 
the danger of evil spirits. I have received gratis, postpaid, 
some two score books and pamphlets written to prove that 
Satan is the moving power behind the seance-room. In this 
collection no one pamphlet appears more frequently than 
that brilliant one written by Dr. Austin Phelps about a gen- 
eration ago urging this explanation. It does not seem clear 
why this thought, even when believed, should prevent an in- 
vestigation. It would be a point gained to prove scientifi- 
cally that devils are at work on the earth ; this would prove 
the existence of a spirit world and deal a deathblow to mate- 
rialism. I should think much less of myself were I afraid to 
enter a s6ance-room, tho I knew it to be full of devils as the 
air with bees at swarming-time. A soul with pure intent is 
inviolable. 

" How dare you agree with me } " said a professor to one 
of his too readily assenting students ; " I do not agree with 
myself." The professor was right and the student wrong. 
The world has not " achieved." Its " future is before. " " Of 
no use to the world," said Emerson, "are those men who 
study to do exactly as was done before, who never understand 
that to-day is a new day." 

Many steps in the last few years have been taken upward 
toward the boundary line that separates the spirit from mat- 
ter. The phonograph that photographs the voice, the long- 
distance telephone which enables us to hear «, 
the voice of a friend tho the ocean intervenes. Boundary 
the wireless telegraph which by waves of ether between Spirit 
is a prophecy of conversation with the inhabi- *^ ^ ®^* 
tants on other planets, the ;r-ray giving us power to look 
through solids, the kinetoscope that helps us to see events of 
the past in action — where is the end ? Lord Kelvin has dis- 
covered that an atom of matter and an atom of ether may 



6 HUXLEY AS A CHILD 

occupy the same space at the same time, and that an electron 
is so small that it will take one hundred thousand of them 
to make an atom ; and Sir William Crookes tells us that there 
is such stupendous energy in the radiations from radium, the 
newly discovered element, that a few grains of it would suffice 
to lift the entire English navy two miles. 

It is in this " new day " much easier to believe that there 

is an inner universe, that this inner universe is a stupendous 

vitalizing force through which run streams of individuality, 

and that he who fully believes has the intelligence and power 

A Network ^"^ goodness of this universe to draw on — the 

of Psychic inner universe, a network of psychic nerves. 

Nerves. touch one, touch all. Thought and feeling 
vibrate everywhere. No man lives to himself nor thinks to 
himself ; as waves of light are darting everywhere across the 
ocean of light-ether and nowhere get confused, each object 
standing out clearly revealed, so in that greater and far more 
refined ocean of thought-ether each thought is clear, distinct 
to the receiver-mind which is attuned to the transmitter- 
mind. We now know that we occupy but a minute corner 
of the universe, and that there easily may be a thousand 
laws and a thousand forces of which we have never as yet 
dreamed. In infinite space there is room for many, many 
things. 

The first step in progress is to be willing to say, " I don't 
know " ; and the second step is like unto it, to be willing to 
be led, empty of theories, empty of preconceptions, by a fact. 

Says Huxley : ^ " Science seems to me to teach in the 
highest and strongest manner the great truth which is em- 
Huxlev as bodied in the Christian conception of entire 
a Little Child surrender to the will of God. Sit down be- 
before a fore the fact as a little child, be prepared to 
give up every preconceived notion, follow 
humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or 
you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn con- 

1 From " The Life and Letters of Huxley," by bis son, vol. i, p. 235. 



APPEAL TO WITHIN 7 

tent and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to 
do this," 

And Goethe tells us that when he set about to learn any- 
new truth he first emptied himself of all knowledge, until he 
could feel as he felt when he began to learn his ABC. 
Humility is ever the entrance-way to the temple of truth, 

I claim for myself in the preparation of this book only 
these simple virtues, if virtues they be: (i) The humility of 
a man who knows that he doesn't know ; and (2) the willing- 
ness to state clearly the exact problem to be solved, content 
to leave its solution to the trained psychologists of the 
world, inside and outside of universities — outside, I say, for 
some of the best psychologists are not so named, are common 
folks equipped with a knowledge of human nature and good 
horse sense. This is a problem concerning which the com- 
mon sense of the fairly enlightened should have much to say. 
It is largely a study of self, and, to understand it, self- 
growth is the essential factor. The appeal is largely from 
experience to experience, and the response is from within. 
In an art-gallery it is safer to trust the instincts of a lad who 
has an artist's soul than the most critical judgment of a pro- 
fessor who has perfect knowledge of the mechanics, the tech- 
nique of painting, but who has not the soul-growth that re 
sponds to art. The logician may smile at instinct as that 
power by which a woman knows a thing is true when it is 
not ; but a musician on its level knows that Wagner's " Parsi- 
fal " is music ; he has contempt for the process of logic by 
which the logician would convince him, for he has that within 
which responds as easily and naturally to music as the eye 
to light or the ear to sound. Tennyson exaggerated pardon- 
ably when he said nothing is worth knowing that can be 
proved. 

Every faculty recognizes truth up to the faculty's devel- 
opment, and up to that level the whole domain of truth is 
credible truth. 

What if it be true that we are breaking through into the 



8 CRUDITY EXPECTED 

next stage of evolution ? It is not likely that we shall find 
that world to be a simple world, but rather one vastly more 

complex than this. It should in no way sur- 
The Next prise us if at first we see weakness and con- 
World tradiction and all things in confusion. When 

men broke through into the intellectual world 
it is easy to believe that they did not find at first a world of 
sound reason. " Ah," said a disappointed skeptic in those 
days, "you told us that this is a world of reason; instead it 
is a world of madness. I judge it by its fruits, and its 
fruits are folly." The fault was not with the world, but with 
man's blundering control of it. After tens of thousands of 
years of effort we have not fully gained the mastery of our 
reasoning faculties. If the next stage of evolution is the 
mastery of faculties by which we shall be able to commune 
consciously with the spirit world, is it unreasonable to be- 
lieve that the mastery of these higher faculties will prove a 
more complicated and difficult task than has proved the mas- 
tery of the reasoning faculties } The ages of blunders in 
winning the mastery of the one should prepare us for a hard 
and long journey and many blunders in winning the other. 

The Problem. 

What is the explanation of the tens of thousands of 
psychic phenomena that are not explainable by any theories 
of mistake, coincidence, or fraud ? 

All attempts at intelligent solution now seem to lie in 
two directions : 

1. The subjective mind — variously called unconscious 
mind, subliminal self, subnormal self, etc. While there 
may be some differences between these terms scientifically 
speaking, for the purposes of this book they will be treated 
as identical. 

2. Spiritualism. By this is meant the theory that refers 
the explanation to intelligences outside of men living in the 
flesh, sometimes called extramundane intelligences. The 



GLADSTONE'S FAITH 9 

advocates of this theory make the term cover good angels and 
bad angels, intelligences from any other part of the physical 
universe, and from human beings who previously existed in 
the flesh. Human beings in the body are called incarnate 
men ; those who have died discarnate men. 

Formerly it was a very simple question when any psychic 
phenomena were encountered. They were considered the 
results of coincidence, or of fraud, or of spirits. Now when we 
succeed in eliminating coincidence and fraud, we reach only 
the threshold of the difficulty. 

Immense progress has been made by the Society for 
Psychical Research and other psychologists in the exploration 
of the subjective mind. Marvels upon marvels have been re- 
vealed, with hints often of a far greater domain to be explored 
— a domain so great and marvelous as to make us stand still 
with amazement. It is easy to understand why Gladstone 
said, when accepting honorary membership in the Society for 
Psychical Research, speaking of the work of the society : " It 
is the most important work which is being done in the world 
— by far the most important." It appears that the conscious 
mind is only a small segment of our spirit selves ; the greater 
part of the mind or soul is below the threshold of conscious- 
ness. As the solar spectrum reveals only a fragment of the 

forces in light — other forces are above the „ , ,, 
° Below the 

waves that make ultra-violet, and others be- Threshold of 
low that make ultra-red, as all the heat-waves, Pon- 

tile chemical waves, the Hertzian waves — so our scio^sness. 
spirit or mind spectrum as revealed in consciousness is lim- 
ited. Who can tell how far below or above consciousness 
extend the powers of the soul .? 

That much of our inner self remains outside of conscious- 
ness is now certain, and it begins to be more than probable 
that the far greater part of the soul is subjective or uncon- 
scious. Wonderful faculties are revealing themselves, as : 

Clairvoyance, the power to see independently of the out- 
ward organ of the eyes. 



lo RUDIMENTARY FACULTIES 

Clairaudience, the power to hear independently of the 
physical organ of the ears. 

Telepathy, the power to communicate thought independ- 
ently of all physical senses, transcending space. 

Prevision, the power to transcend time. 

Telekinesis, the power to influence physical objects with- 
out physical contact. 

Self- Projection, the power of a man to make himself vis- 
ible at a distance. 

These faculties and possibly others which are beginning 
to appear, it so seems — in rudimentary form it may be, in 
some persons already active in curiously blundering, hesita- 
ting, and unsatisfactory ways — throw a flood of light on many 
of the phenomena that have been heretofore set down as in- 
explicable or the work of the spirits. The subjective mind 
as thus viewed is a bough of unblossomed buds — mostly 
unblossomed. 

Is it hard to believe that these rudimentary faculties are 

growing for our next stage of evolutionary development, in 

_, ,. ^ harmony with the environment of our objective 
K-udimentary -' ^ 

Faculties or subjective nature, or both; and that when 

for the Next developed they will make us citizens of the uni- 

tep m verse — both the inner and outer — as our pres- 
E volution. 

ent physical senses have made us citizens of 

this planet .!' This is man's history, a slow adjustment of 
himself to his environment. 

Let us bear this thought in mind — will not the reader 
pardon its repetition .!* Here we are earth-bound and are 
conscious almost only of those powers that have to do with 
the earth ; but we are passing through an evolution that will 
make us universal or cosmic beings, and now we have in the 
rudimentary stage those faculties that will have to do with 
this next stage of our evolution. In some these faculties in 
a blundering way are already performing functions, as telep- 
athy, clairvoyance, prescience — is it altogether absurd to 
believe that there are those among us in whom these powers 



A NEW SPHINX II 

have reached the functional stage, some of whom we call 
geniuses, some prophets, some sensitives, and some me- 
diums ? 

Gladstone was wholly right : The exploration of the 
nature and laws of the subjective mind — including the laws 
that govern its development — is by far the most important 
work being done on earth to-day. With greater emphasis 
than Pope thought of, "The proper study of mankind is 
man " ; and the Greek wrote more wisely than he knew when 
he wrote, " Know thyself. " 

A Sphinx, this time invisible but far more real, has 
seated herself at the world's pathway and is propounding 
mighty riddles, such as we have not heard before. Wo to 
men if they answer foolishly ! Another period of dark ages, 
another frightful night will overwhelm us and we shall not 
escape until we make correct answer. Where is our CEdipus .-' 
An invisible hand is writing down on the world's blackboard 
mighty problems — social, political, moral, religious — answers 
to which we must work out. There is no escape. 

An immense gain has been made in this : we know in 
what direction lies the way of safety, scientifically considered, 
the way that leads upward; that way is the subjective mind, 
an open door to the inner world, the world of inexhaustible 
growth and intelligence; an open door consciously to the 
few, unconsciously to the great masses. Never did the lines 
of science and those of Christ's teachings so converge as 
they do to-day and at this point. 

If this book will assist a little in rallying to the Society 
for Psychical Research the help needed, that it may carryfor- 
ward in a larger way and more rapidly its investigations, it 
will serve at least one most worthy purpose. 

But let it not be thought that the revelation of the mar- 
velous capacity of the subjective mind solves the entire prob- 
lem of psychic phenomena. It solves much, but how much 
remains to be seen. 

Spiritualism is by no means fully explained. This also 



12 SPIRITUALISM UNSOLVED 

is a stupendous, vital problem, and must be squarely met, 
and it will not be solved until thus met. 

Long ago a correspondent in the London Times put it thus 
aptly, speaking of the report on Spiritualism made by the 
Dialectical Society, London : " If it proves nothing else, it 
Spiritualism pi^oves that it is high time competent hands 
Still undertook the unraveling of the Gordian knot 

Unexplained. [-Qf Spiritualism]. It must be fairly, patiently 
unraveled and not cut. The slash of an Alexandrian blade 
has been tried often enough, and has been ineffective." 

And the London Spectator in its April number (1903) 
remarks: "The Spiritualists' movement and allied phenom- 
ena have yet survived unexplained the attack of every form 
of evidentiary analysis." 

Frank Podmore in his great anti-spiritualistic work, " Mod- 
ern Spiritualism " — published 1903 and is the ablest work 
against Spiritualism yet written, comes to the conclusion : 

" Whether the belief in the intercourse with spirits is well founded or 
not, it is certain that no critic has yet succeeded in demonstrating the 
inadequacy of the evidence upon which the Spiritualists rely." 

And he closes his two volumes with this word of warning 
against too great incredulity in the treatment of the phenom- 
ena of Spiritualism : 

" There is a superstition of incredulity ; and the memory of that dis- 
creditable episode in the history of science in these islands [The British 
Isles], the contemptuous rejection for nearly two generations of the 
accumulating evidence for hypnotic anesthesia and kindred phenomena, 
should suffice to teach us that even the extravagances of mysticism may 
contain a residuum of unacknowledged and serviceable fact. We must 
not, for the second time, throw away the baby with the water from the 
bath." 

Dr. Hudson says, in his book against Spiritualism, " The 
Law of Psychic Phenomena " (page 206) : " The man who 
denies the phenomena of spiritism to-day is not entitled to 
be called a skeptic ; he is simply ignorant. " And the great 
scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, recently said that no more 



PSYCHOLOGISTS SHOULD HELP 13 

evidence is needed to prove Spiritualism, for no accepted fact 
in science has a greater or stronger array of proof in its 
behalf. 

During the early part of last year a work of extraordinary 
importance was issued by the English press — the posthumous 
work of Frederic Myers, " Human Personality and Its Sur- 
vival of Bodily Death." Dr. Myers was most "Myers' 
closely identified from the beginning with the Human Per- 
work of the Society for Psychical Research as sonality." 
its secretary, and for a time as its president. Recently Dr. 
Newell Dwight Hillis publicly said that in a century from 
now this book of Myers will be looked upon as the greatest 
book of this generation. Dr. Myers, when he began his 
work with the Society for Psychical Research at Cambridge, 
England, was an agnostic as to future existence. He did 
yeoman service in the exploration of the subjective mind — 
he called it the subliminal — and at the time of his death, three 
years ago, unquestionably knew more about the entire sub- 
ject of psychic phenomena than did any other psychologist. 
For this reason this conclusion of his should carry great 
weight : After deducting all that is fraudulent and misleading 
in spiritualistic phenomena, and attributing all possible to sub- 
jective faculties, there still remaiiis sufficient to justify sure 
belief in actual physical communication with discarnate 
spirits. 

Of this I am not sure. 

But of this I am sure, after a score of years of investiga- 
tion and having had to do with the mass of frauds that swarm 
about and batten upon Spiritualism, dogging its every step, 
there is sufficient to justify the most careful investigation by 
our best-trained psychologists. 

While I found a world of fraud, I saw again and again 
much which indicated the near discovery of a vast world of 
most important truths, and now and then I dropped the plum- 
met and touched no bottom. 

Spiritualism, so far as I have seen, is a great blundering 



14 DISGUST WITH SPIRITUALISM 

attempt to utilize a colossal new force or rather a world of 
new forces. 

Many other and abler investigators have had inexplicable 

yet strangely unsatisfactory experiences. Professor James, 

of Harvard, in a letter speaking of an explanation of " The 

An Opinion of Widow's Mite " ' incident, says : " The hy- 

Professor pothesis of spirit communication is undoubt- 

James. g^jjy ^ possible one and simpler than any other, 
provided one supposes the spirits in question to have been 
tremendously inhibited in their communications." 

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that of the more 
intelligent people nine-tenths hear the mention of Spiritual- 
ism with a curling of the lip. This disgust is easily ex- 
plained by the contradictory character and absurdity of the 
general run of communications attributed to spirits, the de- 
generacy of many mediums, the darkness and general unsatis- 
factoriness of the average s6ance-room, the childlike credulity 
of many Spiritualists, and, beyond all, the fraud that surrounds 
the whole subject like an atmosphere. 

Let it be borne in mind that the evidence is so great in 
favor of the spiritualistic explanation of a large portion of 
psychic phenomena that the Society for Psychical Research 
has devoted much of its time in the past twenty years to this 
branch of its investigation — and this under the lead of such 
presidents as Professor Sidgwick of Cambridge University, 
Frederic Myers, Arthur J. Balfour (the present Prime Minis- 
ter of England), Prof. William James of Harvard, Sir William 
Crookes, and Sir Oliver Lodge. Nearly all of these men, if 
not all, found it necessary to accept the spiritualistic expla- 
Settlinff the ^^t'^®^ ^^ certain of the phenomena. Yet there 
Question are multitudes of vehement critics who settle 
by a Wave of the whole question at a single sitting — they 
^^ ' know "just how the trick is done." Those 
who thus settle it are usually men of little scientific training 
at investigations of this sort, or men who have had scarcely 

» See Part II. 



BABBLE OF BABES 



IS 



any opportunity for investigation. They settle it all by an in- 
terior process, an inner illumination, by that certain instinct, 
as already mentioned, that knows a thing is not true even when 
it is. Yet there is not one of these critics who is not calmly 
confident of his superiority as a close observer. In this in- 
vestigation cocksureness is the certain mark of the tyro. 

I can not reconcile myself to the spirit hypothesis except 
through thinking that we are entering a psychic field of in- 
vestigation that is marvelously complex, and that what we 
are getting now is but the babble of babes, not because of 
the lack of the intellectual ability of spirits, but of the lack 
of ability on both the earth side and the spirit side to handle 
the forces that make communication possible. A wretched 
piano might easily make hodgepodge of masterpieces even 
tho rendered by a Paderewski ; so an intellectually shallow 
medium might readily enough make silly the wisest utter- 
ances of Shakespeare or Franklin. 

The world is justified in refusing to accept the spirit 
hypothesis as long as it can find any other reasonable expla- 
nation of psychic phenomena. We have a right to require 
not only clear evidence of communication from outside in- 
telligences, but that this communication must be of a nature 
that will enable us to identify the communicating spirits. 

We all know that there is unending chicanery, disgusting 
fraud; but is there anything genuine.-' If so, what and from 
whence .-' Those are the questions to be solved. Fraud? Yes • 
Nobody cared whether the message was wise but What 
or foolish that Marconi ticked across the ocean. More ? 
The important thing was that the letter S was ticked across 
by the one who claimed to have ticked it, and that it was re- 
ceived by the one who claimed to have received it. Those 
feeble taps proved the practicability of wireless telegraphy. 
The rest was detail. 

If but a single communication has crossed " the gulf of 
silence," and this can be scientifically demonstrated, that 
fact is of extraordinary interest and of inestimable impor- 



i6 SCIENTISTS FALLIBLE 

tance. All discoveries of the past are as nothing in com- 
parison. The one who demonstrates the practicability of 
intramundane communication will go down into history as a 
far greater discoverer than Columbus, than Newton, than 
Morse, than Marconi, yes, than all combined. 

The present generation must work out anew the answer 
to this spiritualistic problem in the light of all our present 
psychic knowledge. 

The fact that the great majority of scientists are against 

this hypothesis is not conclusive evidence, for not thirty 

years ago they were more unanimously against hypnotism. 

Q ... Hypnotism was everywhere denounced as de- 

of Scientists lusion or charlatanry. Even Lord Kelvin said : 

not Con- " Nearly everything about it is imposture, the 

c usive. j^ggj. f^yj^y observation. " Not thirty years ago 
I had at my residence several meetings, inviting representa- 
tive men, physicians, and other professional men, and had 
Prof. Edward Payson Thwing give exhibitions of hypnot- 
ism under test conditions. Some scientists whom I had in- 
vited would not come; they pooh-poohed it all as delusion 
or fraud. It was only after repeated demonstrations in the 
hospitals of New York and Brooklyn of the hypnotizing of 
patients who were to be operated on that we could get New 
York scientists to treat the matter seriously. Now, who 
doubts hypnotism ? A quarter of a century shows a complete 
change of front by scientists. They made a mistake once ; 
why should it be thought impossible for them to make a second 
mistake ? Galileo tells how the scientists at Padua refused 
to look through his telescope when he offered them a chance 
to do so, saying that it was humbuggery. 

Science shows herself in an unfavorable light when she 
attempts to browbeat us out of the evidence of our senses, 
and is in the last degree unscientific when she refuses to in- 
vestigate multitudes of well-authenticated facts. 

Science should move in this matter with great delibera- 
tion, but move. The subject is worthy of it. The phenom- 



THE CHURCH 17 

ena should be subjected to the most severe critical tests, put 
through the furnace, heated seven times, of critical investi- 
gation — this by that class of scientists who ^ . 
'^ •' . . Science 

have learned to do accurate thinking, accurate should be 

work along the lines of modern psychology. Conserva- 
Scientists can never recall too frequently the tively 
fact that all beliefs, in their early history, were 
contradictory and ran wild : Astronomy ran to astrology, 
chemistry to alchemy and many other chimeras, hypnotism 
to every sort of humbuggery. Healing by suggestion is still 
in its chaotic crazy-quilt state. It is just what we might 
expect of Spiritualism, if it be true, that it also must pass 
its crazy-quilt period. 

The Church also must have care. There is a real danger 
lest in its zeal to get rid of spirit communications it gets rid 
of the Bible itself. If the power to communicate between 
this and the spirit world be a fact, the remedy is not to deny 
it, but to understand just what it is and what are its laws, 
and to bring it under control. If true, we may rest assured 
that it will not in the end work harm, but good; truth 
matches all around. It is not well in an a priori fashion to 
deny it and assail it. 

Nineteen hundred years' removal from the spirit phenom- 
ena of the Bible and the men who witnessed them and 
vouched for their occurrence is imposing a greater and greater 
strain upon faith. 

Apply the claims of Spiritualists to the facts in the Bible 
hardest to believe — hardest for scientists to believe — the 
facts of the birth and resurrection of Jesus. If certain 
phenomena which I have seen in the seance-room, and which 
I have not been able to explain by any hypothesis of fraud or 
coincidence, stand the fuller tests of scientific investigation, 
it will become scientifically easy to believe that a supreme 
spirit, as was Jesus, came down into the flesh, as did He, 
and was able to lay down His life and to take it up 
again. 



i8 FREDERIC MYERS' PREDICTION 

Says Frederic Myers : ^ 

" I venture now a bold saying ; for I predict that, in consequence of 
the new evidence, all reasonable men, a century hence, will believe in 
the resurrection of Christ ; whereas in default of the new evidence, no 
reasonable man, a century hence, would have believed it." 

Let us not be alarmed. It is one thing to master Spiri- 
tualism ; it is another thing to be mastered by it. Spirit 
communications may be true — communications from good 
and from bad spirits — and yet much of the teaching known 
as Spiritualism be untrue. The religious thought that goes 
under this name is one thing; belief in communication 
between the spirit world and this is another. 

Yet is there not a real danger that in trying to build a 
tower to the spirit world we may have for our pay another 
and worse babel of tongues — this for a while } If this be a 
danger, is it not possible to avert it.-* 

But let us beware lest we give occasion for future genera- 
tions to say also of us, The Stone the Spiritual Build- 
ers Rejected has Become the Head of the Corner. 

1 (" Human Personality," vol. 2, p. 28S.) 



PARTI 

HINDERING DISPOSITIONS AND 
OPINIONS 

An auto-suggestion may be as hurtful to sound reasoning 
when it is against as when it is in favor of an hjrpothesis. 



<*My supposed opponent and I are like two children who 
have looked through a keyhole at the first few moves in a 
game of chess, — of whose rules we are entirely ignorant. My 
companion urges that since we have seen only < pawns ' moved, 
it is probable that the game is played with the pawns alone ; 
and that the major pieces seen confusedly behind the pawns 
are only a kind of fringe or ornament of the board. I reply 
that those pieces stand on the board like the pawns ; and that 
since they are larger and more varied than the pawns, it is 
probable that they are meant to play some even more impor- 
tant role in the game as it develops. We agree that we must 
wait and see whether the pieces are moved ; and I now main- 
tain that I have seen a piece moved, altho my companion 
has not noticed it. The chessboard in this parable is the 
Cosmos ; the pawns are those human faculties which make 
for the preservation and development on this planet of the in- 
dividual and the race; the pieces are faculties which may 
be either the mere by-products of terrene evolution, or, on the 
other hand, may form an essential part of the faculty with 
which the human germ or the human spirit is originally 
equipped, for the purpose of self-development in a cosmical, as 
opposed to a merely planetary, environment." — FREDERIC 
W. H. MYERS, "Human Personality," vol. i., pp. 93-94. 



WAYS IN WHICH SOME SPIRITUALISTS PRE- 
DISPOSE INVESTIGATORS UNFAVORABLY 
—HINDERING DISPOSITIONS AND OPINIONS 

I. That they are too credulous. 

A prominent New York lawyer has a wife who is a " sen- 
sitive," or medium. The husband is a man of undoubted 
veracity and has occupied in the city a high judicial position. 
The wife is what is called a trance medium, but she never 
gives public sittings and is reluctant about giving any sit- 
tings except to members of her family and at times to inti- 
mate friends. 

It has been my good fortune to be admitted to the confi- 
dence of this family and to have received from them not a 
little help in the making of this book, as will appear in sev- 
eral chapters. 

As this lady has requested that in no way shall I so use 
her name or that of her husband as to identify them before 

the public, I shall speak of her as Mrs, Judge C , and 

her husband as Judge C . The reader must take my 

word for it that both the judge and his wife are persons of high 
standing, of intellectual force, and of unimpeachable veracity. 

Judge C informs me that at one time he asked the 

" spirit control " ^ of his wife whether a medium who was 
having materializations at a certain place was 
fraudulent or not. The spirit control said, "I _ ^^P 
will attend a stance and see." In a few days he 
reported that he had attended and found part of the phenom- 
ena genuine and part fraudulent, and explained the way the 

1 The spirit that is said to control a medium when in a trance or semi-trance 
condition. 

21 



21 HEARTLESS FRAUDS 

fraudulent ones were performed. Knowing nothing of this 
until afterward, I made my own investigation of similar mani- 
festations through another medium and discovered that this 
kind of fraud was there committed in the way that the spirit 
control said that he saw it done. 

At a circle given by this materialization medium, I saw 
a form appear that was recognized by a business man present 
as that of his wife who had lately died. He took the form 
by the hand and kissed her, and then introduced her to the 
circle. No less than ten other forms were recognized by 
different sitters as those of departed members of their fami- 
lies or of friends. Many in the circle were affected to tears, 
and yet all of these so-called materializations were the me- 
dium herself. If she desired to impersonate one whose 
stature was less than her own, she would walk or glide with 
knees more or less bended ; or if a child was to be repre- 
sented she would move about awkwardly on her knees ; if the 
one to be impersonated was taller than herself, she would 
make use of a wire bust that fitted the shoulders and made 
her seem nearly a foot higher than her normal height. Such 
trickery, with the paraphernalia of white gauze, false faces, 
etc., in a room nearly dark, makes it easy to deceive the eyes, 
especially when the emotions are deeply stirred. 

At a circle of another medium it was announced that L 

was present and would materialize for his wife. There was 
a lady of this name in the circle, whose husband was in the 
spirit world. She was much surprised when L ap- 
peared in front of the curtain in full military uniform and 
with the stars of a major-general and she was called to the 
curtain " to greet her husband. " Her husband had never 
been a general nor had he been in the army at 
^^^f^"^^* any time, but there had been a prominent ma- 
Seem Crossed, jo^-general in the Civil War of this same name. 
Evidently a mistake had been made ; the wires 
had gotten badly crossed, either upon this side or upon the 
spirit side. But Mrs. L , who was a spiritualist rooted 



LUTHER R. MARSH 23 

and grounded in the faith, just the same aftet the sitting as 
she was before — probably took no more precaution than be- 
fore against error or deception. 

At another circle it was announced that a near relative of 
mine was present. When I asked if he had any way of iden- 
tifying himself, he said, through the control, that shortly 
before he had died he had assumed a serious obligation — 
describing the obligation. This was true; but with a little 
detective work I discovered that at a few sittings pre- 
vious to this one this same control had cross-examined a 
friend of mine and had got this identical bit of informa- 
tion. 

I attended a circle at which a husband was called up to 
the curtain of the cabinet by the " spirit " of his wife. She 
said to him : " Dear, we on this side are much concerned for 
our medium and I want you to help her. She worries so 
greatly on account of the mortgage that is on her house, and 
this worry depletes her psychic force to such a degree that I 
fear I can not come to you any more, and this will so grieve 
me. Now, my dear, I want you to do me a favor—to-mor- 
row pay off her mortgage, won't you? " 

"Yes, darling, if you wish it." 

"Thank you, thank you, dear; I do wish it, as this will 
make it easy for me to come to you hereafter." 

And the faithful in the circle all praised the husband 
as affectionate, soft-hearted, and the spirits rapped in ap- 
proval. 

Yes, but there is a softness of heart that reaches upward, 
too often, to the brain. 

In November, 1903, there was a court trial in New York 
State at which the assignments of several life-insurance poli- 
cies were set aside by the judge. The assignments had been 
made by the late well-known New York lawyer, Luther R. 
Marsh. It will be remembered that Mr. Marsh was shame- 
lessly duped by the medium, Mme. Diss-Debar, as was re- 
vealed in the exposure that took place in newspaper and 



24 PSYCHIC COBWEBS 

court in 1888. At the trial in November last a Mr. Huy- 
ler, the husband of medium Huyler, testified : ' 

On the day Mr. Marsh transferred the policies he and his wife had 
gone to Mr. Marsh's room, where Mrs. Huyler claimed to hold com- 
munication with the spirits, and told Mr. Marsh there was a terrible 
uproar in spiritland because he declined to transfer the policies. She 
told him that his spiritualistic wife, Adelaide Neilson, was tearing her 
hair and weeping reproaches upon him. 

His wife, Mrs. Marsh, was acting in the same fashion, and his 
deceased father-in-law, "Sunset" Alvin Stewart, was exceedingly wroth. 

Mr. Marsh was alarmed at this manifestation of spiritualistic dis- 
pleasure, and agreed to transfer the policies. At the last moment he hesi- 
tated, and claimed that because his will was made out he thought it bet- 
ter to postpone the matter a little while ; but Mrs. Huyler insisted that 
he go across the way to a lawyer's office, and he did so. 

While he was gone Mrs. Huyler admitted that the trance was a 
" fake " and said that she wanted to get all she could from " the old fool " 
before he died. 

Mr. Marsh returned to the room presently and assured her that the 
transfer had been made as she desired. 

As soon as this evidence had been given by Huyler, Justice Marean 
ended the proceedings. 

" This man is a thief and a fraud," he said, turning to Huyler, " and 
he acted the part of a thief when he and his wife conspired to secure 
these policies by the means he has just related." 

Poor Marsh ! We do well to believe in religious things, 
of course ; but with our religion we should have sanctified 
common sense. 

Blind, unthinking belief is as objectionable as blind un- 
thinking skepticism, and is sometimes dangerous. 

Honest skepticism need not be antagonism ; to avoid an- 
tagonism it is not necessary to " spill over on the other side." 
One who is willing to be fooled is easily fooled. Barnum 
was right : a large portion of mankind place 

Willingly themselves in a mental attitude that makes it 
Fooled an , , , t^ , 

Easy Dupe. '^^^Y ^asy to humbug them. But, as says the 

poet, the right to be a fool is "safe from all 

devices human." These psychic cobwebs have tangled the 

feet of even many an intellectual giant, and the shrewdest 

* Quoted from the New York Times, November 26, 1903. 



NATURE'S LAWS UNCHANGING 25 

experts need to sail these mystic seas with sharp eyes and 
level heads, for many here have lost their bearings. 

We can not repeat too often to ourselves in these inves- 
tigations that this is a question that should be approached 
with coolness, with judgment, with deliberation, not with 
preconception or prejudice in favor of or against, for what 
we expect to see we are apt to see. An earnest wish plays 
pranks with our senses, making us " see substance where 
there is empty nothing " ; and the reverse is equally true. 
We should always remember that some of us gravitate easily 
toward certain facts, others against them; it is a matter 
largely of initial momentum, temperament, education, char- 
acter. 

2. That they are too ready to believe in the Super- 
natural. 

Men feed on superstitions as greedily as little children 
on bonbons. We nearly all dearly love the marvelous. It 
is bewitching to the average man, giving spur and loose reins 
to a heated fancy, changing affairs of the imagination into 
imaginary affairs — there is a vast difference between these 
two. The desire to commune with existences thought to be 
" beyond nature " — an unknown mundiis intellectuum — is a 
deathless hunger. This, when it becomes morbid, makes us 
ready to leap clear over nature and nature's laws and gulp 
down the most impossible stories. Admit the supernatural, 
then anything becomes possible. 

There is nothing supernatural but God — He is back 

of but not contrary to nature. Natural law rules wherever 

intelligence is — alike on both sides of the grave. Heaven 

and earth may pass away, but not one jot nor 

one tittle of law will cease, for law is an ex- Nothing 

- , r ^ T TTT1 111 Supernatural 

pression of the nature of God. Why should ^^^ q,^^ 

the getting rid at death of these outer husks 
change our relations to nature and nature's laws? Doubt- 
less at death we get rid of our coarser environments — those 



26 "FOOL'S WORLD" 

with which the physical senses have to do ; but these senses 
and environments are the shadows of real substances, and the 
substance answers to its shadow. 

Whatever the spirit world is, we may rest assured that 
we shall find it natural, in no way a contradiction of true 
common sense or true reason. We can not any more there 
than here get warm before a painted fire, nor satisfy hunger 
with a painted feast. Yet thousands of Spiritualists seem to 
expect the world to believe that the ghosts of Beecher, of 
Franklin, of Shakespeare, can appear at ten thousand circles 
in different parts of the world on the same evening, and if 
need be at the same instant of time. It may easily be that 
there are a thousand laws of nature of which we know noth- 
ing; but were there a billion it is only reasonable to believe 
that no two laws will be found anywhere in the universe, 
on either side of the death line, that contradict one an- 
other. The universe is, as its name implies, a unit. One, 
supreme Reason, consistent and unchangeable, governs it. 
Belief in this is part of the granite foundation that under- 
lies all things. Disbelief in it is the way to the insane 
asylum. 

The wife of a sea captain told me that once when on 
shore she went into what is called a "fool's world," where 
things are so arranged by machinery that the floor and sides 
of the room, furniture, pictures on the wall, table, lamp, 
pitcher, tumblers, turn slowly upside down, while the chair 
on which you sit remains right side up. She said she had 
never been seasick in her life, altho very frequently upon 
the ocean in the stormiest of weather, yet, strange to say, 
when in this "fool's world" she became seasick, altho she 
knew all the time that she was sitting still and all the other 
things were turning round, each screwed fast to its place. 
That foolish section of the Spiritualist host who are ready 
to believe anything that comes from the cabinet must expect 
to encounter incredulity and at times disgust when they run 
against the common sense ingrained in mankind. But when 



SUBJfXTIVE MIND 27 

belief in the supernatural becomes a disease, it is past the 
reach of all argument and generally of all medicine. 

3. That they constantly confound the workings of the 
subjective mind of the entranced medium with the work- 
ings of spirits. 

From out of the subjective mind come hysteria, ecstasy, 
much of what passes for obsession, somnambulism, hypno- 
tism, much of so-called witchcraft, clairvoyance, clairaudi- 
ence, secondary personality, and we know not what else. 
In investigations of this sort, the first of all 
things that we should know is, as Kant put it, '^^e Power 

the faculty of cognition and the sources of _ , 

■' ° Subconscious 

knowledge which lie within it. A mechanic Faculties, 
is wiser than are we. His first concern is to 
know his tools ; then he goes to work. But we go to work 
too often to master the world of psychic phenomena before 
we have learned anything of the tools of the mind that have 
to do with this phenomenon. 

Of two ways to account for a phenomenon, the simplest 
that explains all of the facts should be adopted — all of the 
facts. With our present lack of knowledge, Spiritualists are 
not justified in settling these phenomena offhand — any more 
than are Antispiritualists. 

Who among us can give an explanation of the following 
personal experience "i One day while asleep I dreamed that 
I saw a battle, I saw the maneuverings of great armies, 
heard the cannonading, many people were killed, the 
battle continued for a long time; then one of the armies 
retreated, and I saw the field covered with dead and wounded, 
and the dead gathered and buried. I awoke and was told that 
not more than half a minute before a gun had been shot off 
out in the street. That gun evidently started my dream, in 
which were crowded the events of hours. At times when we 
are not asleep a loud noise will start the imagination into 
action, and seemingly in an objective way many objects will 



28 UNEXPLAINED APPARITIONS 

appear to us, and appear so real that it is impossible to dis- 
tinguish between the subjective and objective. Besides, 
who can limit the strange things that may happen, if it be 
true that there is some power within us in certain normal or 
abnormal states that even enables us to project ourselves so 
really that we become apparent to the physical senses of 
others and see and hear things at a great distance ? 

What are we to do with facts of which the following two 
are typical ? 

An aunt of mine died suddenly at midnight in a house in 

which I was resident. Her son-in-law, living on a farm two 

miles away, at about the time the aunt died, 

Apparitions ^g^t for vvater at a spring some distance from 
before and 
after Death. ^^^ house. He saw standing by the spring a 

well-defined apparition of this aunt. He knew 
nothing of her illness. Imagination, coincidence — possibly. 
Many facts like this one are given by The Society for Psy- 
chical Research, verified as carefully as possible. 

Take this other typical fact : The son of a clergyman at his 
home in Illinois was playing on the floor with his four-year- 
old son, who, pointing to the ceiling, said : " Dada, look 
there ! " The father looked up and saw with perfect clear- 
ness his own father looking at him. A comparison of time 
showed that this was three hours befoi'-e the death of the elder 
father in Kentucky, the son being wholly ignorant of the ill- 
ness of the father. As the apparition was first seen by the 
child, there seemed to be no possibility of hallucination or 
any known operation of telepathy ; and, as the father was not 
dead, how does Spiritualism supply the certain explanation ? 

Should not Spiritualists also apply to themselves the 
words of Shakespeare : " There are more things in heaven 
and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy " ? 

4. That they are too flippant. 

Huxley, after attending a seance, said the trivialities seen 
and heard at these circles had but one good result : they sup- 



A "SPIRIT'S" TALK 29 

plied a strong argument against suicide. I heard at a circle 
a spirit jokingly invited to be present at a Thanksgiving 
dinner. He said he would be there, as he always liked turkey 
and cake. This produced a hearty laugh, in which the 
"spirit " joined. This kind of exhibition will never convert 
to Spiritualism the sober-minded, the men of judgment. 
The most sacred instincts of the soul are against it. 

If Spiritualism be true, it is easy to believe that it is a 
fundamental error to have sittings for fun ; that the kind of 
heart you throw into the spirit world determines the kind of 
spirits that come after it; that in the psychic realm like 
draws like. 

There is much sound wisdom in these words I heard at a 
circle from one who was said to be a spirit : 

" Friends, some who come here and who believe in Spir- 
itualism do not take these communications seriously, but as a 
matter of amusement. This is wholly wrong 

and hurtful, making it exceedingly difficult for Danger of 
' , . ^ . T. , Frivolity at 

developed spirits to communicate. Remember, sittings. 

we spirits are in a world where thought and 
feeling have dynamic force. You are in a coarse physical 
world and are not so subject to these influences. You make 
a mistake that is injurious to yourselves in not knowing the 
laws of spiritual attraction and repulsion. You should de- 
velop a consecrated spiritual life. A frivolous spirit in the 
s6ance-room opens the door to spirits that you may find it 
hard to get rid of. Beware of having fun with what you some- 
times jestingly call the Devil ; he has in every way the advan- 
tage. He doesn't need to mark the cards to read them, nor 
run lead into the dice to make them turn to his guessing. 
No ! life is no joke, either on your side or on ours. Spir- 
itual development is the result of a serious purpose. 

" Remember, you are living in a world largely of effects ; 
we are living in a world of causes, and also of effects from 
higher worlds. All things of importance in your earth life 
begin on this side and are carried into execution under our 



30 HARD-HEADEDNESS NEEDED 

direction. There are many spirits who are frivolous and 

truculent; some are simply mischievous, some mean harm. 

Death has not radically changed their charac- 

Charactera ^^^.g Qood character is a matter of growth. 
Matter of 
Growth ^^ y^^ S^ve the conditions, some of these spirits 

will wheedle you, flatter you, bamboozle you, 

making you believe that they are anybody you ask for — your 

child, sister, or mother, or Shakespeare, or St. Paul. You 

are easily led captive by your foolish vanity, 

" The greatest of all forces in the spirit world is goodness, 

which holds the evil spirits in control, but not against their 

will, except to prevent injury to others against the consent 

of those others. If you give the conditions for them to enter 

the sphere of your life, we can not keep them from entering, 

nor keep you from harm. 

" Friends, hear me : Do not come to the spirit circle 
through mere curiosity or to have some idle talk with de- 
parted friends. Come with a sincere desire to get good, and 
good will come to you ; otherwise, I entreat you not to come." 

The time may come when Spiritualists will enter circles 
only after fasting and prayer. When that time comes, it 
may be that a chief argument for skepticism will be removed. 

5. That they are too ready to accept foolish or hurt- 
ful utterances from the s6ance-room. 

The world will not soon forget the mad doctrine of " soul 
affinities " which quickly degenerated into free love, the 
teachings that the " Bible is a book the world has outlived," 
that " God is not a person, but a principle," that " men are 
parts of God," that " it is folly to talk of Christ as a sac- 
rifice for sin. " The spirit world was made responsible for 
these and many other like teachings. Of course many Spiri- 
tualists, quite likely a large majority, did not accept these 
utterances. But a large portion of the outside public to this 
day believe that these are the teachings of this " cult. " 

At only a few circles are heard even now expressions 



BETTER THOUGHTS 31 

of fervent love for God, reverence for things sacred, expres- 
sions of meekness, of true piety, of self-abnegation. 

Why should this be? Many leading Spiritualists have 
told us that Jesus was chiefest of mediums, and 
so have many spirit controls. If this be so, then If "Jesus was 
why should not Spiritualists reverently heark- „ ,. „ 
en to the utterances of this prince of mediums Hear Him. 
concerning the inner life of the spirit world.'' 

I listened one evening to one who I was told was an 
exalted spirit. He said : " Listen to what this Jesus said. 
He spoke what He knew. He came down from the higher 
realms, far higher than the one I inhabit. He is an exceed- 
ingly great spirit, a bright light, who came down to mate- 
rialize on earth. He had power to give up His life and to 
take it again. Read carefully and understand His words. 
We here feel His influence but do not see Him; He is a 
mighty power to lift up mankind in the flesh and out of 
the flesh," 

Yet again and again I have heard Jesus spoken of lightly 
in the seance-room as "good enough for the age in which He 
lived " ; as the Boston merchant who, after reading Shake- 
speare for the first time, confidently assured his friends that 
he did not believe that there were a dozen vten in all Boston 
who could have written these plays, so these people are 
sure that there are some to-day — possibly not many — who 
excel Jesus in wisdom and in purity of life and spiritual 
power. 

Even from the standpoint of Spiritualists there is a pro- 
digious likelihood against the infallibility of spirit teachings. 
Let Spiritualism be so presented that the 
world will understand it to mean clean man- Spirits' 
hood and womanhood, love to God and man, infallible 
God a person supreme and Father over all, and 
Jesus Christ His embodiment on earth, and the pathway of 
Spiritualism will have removed from it some of its chiefest 
rocks of offense and stumbling. I have in my notebooks 



32 THE SWEET NOW 

many records of what I have heard which bear testimony that 
some of the teachings in the sdance-rooms are in harmony 
with these better thoughts. The following are typical : 

Question from circle : " Why does not the spirit world 
prevent the miseries that are pressing so hard upon this world, 
and have for myriads of ages ? " 

Answer : " The spirit world is doing everything to pre- 
vent these miseries that it possibly can without infringement 
upon the free agency of the individual on earth. It is a 
fixed law that can not possibly be evaded, that each individual 
is free; his individuality can not be invaded without his con- 
sent by even the most exalted spirits. Then, 
" Predigested did ^e interfere unnecessarily in your world, it 

t iu^ would simply end in a greater tangle. A law 

Best. of your nature requires you to think out very 

largely the answers to the problems you en- 
counter ; it is your education. It is not well for the stomach 
that its food be predigested for it, except now and then to 
help it over difficulties too great for it. The same law holds 
for the soul." 

Again : " You are not always to sing about the sweet by 
and by, but the sweet now; as Jesus said, Sufficient is the 
day unto the necessities for it, and each world until you 
reach it. Let there be gladness without frivolity, serious- 
ness without despair. Friends, sufficient is one world at a 
time, one home at a time, one moment at a time ; and fill 
that world, that home, and that moment with good, holy 
thoughts and good service, and then the great Father in His 
own time will bring you to the other worlds. 

" If a man worships a little God in a little city with a 
few people, he becomes a little man and his God is a little 
God. But if he worships a God who is Himself the embodi- 
ment of the sacrifice of service, who loves all, and is to be 
found in all, and interpreted by all events and all things, all 
of which work together for good, such a one is a large soul ; 
for as a man thinketh so he is." 



"COLONEL INGERSOLL'S SPIRIT" 23 

6. That they are too apt to denounce skeptics as 
hostile when these skeptics are engaged in making only- 
honest investigations. 

It is foolish to tell men : " You must believe before you 
investigate, as your unbelief shuts the door against spirit 
communication." This is a closed circle: Must believe be- 
fore you can investigate ; must investigate before you can be- 
lieve. The other world is to this world a foreign country, a 
hinterland, or rather a foreland. If one comes to me claim- 
ing to be a spirit messenger, I have a right to ask for his 
credentials. I must not be denounced as of a skeptical 
temperament because I so ask. 

At a circle Wilson MacDonald, the well-known sculptor, 

said in my hearing : " This thing of spirit return I know to 

be true. After my old friend, Robert G. 

IngersoU, had died, he appeared to me at a ^^^ ^ol- 

circle in this same room in materialized form. _ ,, 

IngersoU 

He said to me : 'Mac, my old friend, I am glad Materialize? 
to see you. You know, I believed nothing in 
this, but now here I am. ' I looked him all over, then I said : 
' Colonel, this surely is you; it is you. How glad I am to 
see you 1 ' " 

However certain men like MacDonald are in their belief 
in Spiritualism, it would be the height of absurdity for them 
to expect men of the temperament and beliefs of an IngersoU 
when he was in the flesh to believe in spirit return without 
fullest proofs. The opposition to investigation exhibited by 
some mediums and other Spiritualists is simply dogmatism 
and intolerance in a new dress. It is far removed from the 
spirit that frees itself from all predisposition, prejudice, bias, 
— from Huxley's spirit of the little child sitting before a fact 
interrogating it. 

There is much food for thought for this class of ob- 
jecting Spiritualists in this talk directed to me by a "spirit 
control " : 

" Sometimes I almost grow weary at the little progress 
3 



34 GROWTH ESSENTIAL 

which seems to be made toward bringing the race of men to 
understand the possibilities and certainties of spiritual commu- 
nication. I have worked for many years giving a very large 
portion of my possible service to this work — service that I have 
taken from other and very important employments in the 

spirit world. But I see that men can not get 
A " Spirit ^ , . , , , X . , . 

Control " ^^ ^^^^ truth except by growth. It is not arbi- 

Grows Weary trarily to be seized. You yourself have forci- 
of Our biy expressed this truth in your little book on 
' Evolution,' a copy of which you sent to our 
instrument and which she read in my hearing. As you say, 
we can not understand a spiritual truth unless we grow to 
it. How can an artist understand the beauty of a picture 
until he develops up to that stage of beauty .'* Progress will 
be made toward these divine truths only as the human race 
grows the faculties by which these truths are comprehended." 
We surely can lay it down as axiomatic that there is no 
truth in the universe, on either side the grave, that will de- 
prive man of the right of judgment. 

" The One that worketh high and wise, 
Nor pauses in His plan, 
Will take the sun out of the skies 
Ere freedom out of man." 

Spiritualists, however certain they may be that they have 
the truth, must learn to have patience with honest unbeliev- 
ers. Scoffers are an entirely different class of people and 
need be given no attention ; but for the former class spiritual- 
ists should strive to imitate the spirit shown by a London pic- 
ture-dealer, who had some works of art for sale which he 
claimed were by " old masters " — his advertisement assured 
the public that " dissentious skeptics can have every satisfac- 
tion." 



EXPERT TESTIMONY PREFERRED 35 

7. That they are too unwilling in many cases to per- 
mit the application to psychic phenomena of real tests, 
and in nearly all cases too neglectful or unskilful to 
supply such tests. 

Much more is expected of Spiritualism than that it be 
able to stand a trial by jury; this for two reasons. The 
phenomena often take place in a dark room, usually the inves- 
tigator is not permitted to touch the materializing forms, nor 
is he permitted to make necessary tests to discover whether 
ventriloquism and other of the arts of the con- 
jurer are used. Then, the phenomena are con- Extra- 
tradictions to the ordinary ongoings of nature, e ' d ^ ^ t 
or at least to our common observation of these Unreasonable, 
ongoings. To such phenomena we must apply 
something more than the ordinary rules of evidence. It is 
not altogether unreasonable that they be required to stand 
extraordinary tests of demonstration. As long as any other 
reasonable theory than that of spirits will explain the 
phenomena, this one will not be accepted by the average 
man. There is common sense in this requirement. If a 
witness says that he saw a man steal an overcoat, he will be 
much more readily believed than if he says he saw a man 
take off his arm and put it on again. It is not quantity of 
evidence that is now required of Spiritualism ; it is quality. 
There has been gathered a prodigious quantity of facts 
vouched for by honest persons, but the test conditions ap- 
plied are generally most insufficient. 

I would rather have the testimony of an expert who had 
seen the phenomena one tim.e than that of a non-expert who 
had seen the same phenomena a score of times. An expert 
is one who knows what to look for, and can see clearly and 
can so express himself as to make you see what he saw. The 
faculty of accurate observation is an exceedingly important 
but rare faculty — very, very few possess it. In addition, 
these qualifications in a witness of these phenomena are 
necessary: honesty, spiritual insight, unfaltering courage to 



26 COMMON SENSE REQUIREMENTS 

deny or accept what is presented in obedience to conscience 
— to tell just what he observes — the truth, the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth. 

The burden of proof lies with Spiritualists who assert 
things that are contrary to the common experiences of man- 
kind. And it is to be remembered that it is a 
Spiritualists , , i , • , r 

Should ^^^y ^^^ ^ hypothesis that refers to spirits 

Make Inves- everything in the seance-room that is difficult 

tigation ^q understand. Spiritualists must reverse 

^^* their methods. They now usually block the 

way to investigation ; they should /ead the way ; they should 

give weight to the following demands : 

1. That every medium stand a critical examination as to 
his or her mediumship, and that those who stand such ex- 
amination be given certificates, which certificates are to be 
on exhibition in the seance-room. 

2. That leading Spiritualists have nothing to do with a 
medium who will not submit to such conditions as will make 
fraud impossible. These seances must not be only npon- 
honor affairs. The requirement should be carried even so far 
as to recognize that it is not reasonable for a materialized 
spirit to refuse always to permit himself to be led back to the 
cabinet, and with arms about him, to dematerialize. 

Turn on the searchlight of critical investigation in all 
fulness. Insist that everything be done in the open that is 
possible to be thus done — in full daylight. 

If fraud is discovered, let exposure be public and unpity- 
ing, no matter whose feelings or interests are hurt. 

Will not mediums permit a word of exhortation from a 
well-wisher .-• Be content to fail. If you can give only little 
phenomena, say so. Do not determine to give more phe- 
nomena than any other medium or satisfy morbidly increas- 
ing desires for more and more. Be just what you are. If 
you can't be a loaf, be a slice, be a crumb; be honest. 
And do not be oversensitive or too impatient for recognition 
of what you deem your just claims, or for your reward. Re- 



APPEAL TO MEDIUMS 37 

member, idealists and reformers do not get their pay every 
Saturday night ; in the Hall of Fame books are not promptly 
posted. A wit once said of Horace Greeley : He made and 
unmade more Presidents than any other man living, and his 
reward " was permanent Secretary of the Exterior, in charge 
of the thermometer. " As Luther passed through an ante- 
chamber to face the Diet at Worms, George of Freunsberg, 
a brave German knight, placed his hand on his shoulder, 
saying : 

" Little Monk, you are about to face what neither I nor the bravest 
soldier, whose trade is war, ever faced on the battle-field. If thy heart is 
right and thy cause is just, go on in God's name and He will not forsake 
thee." 

If Spiritualists know that they have a vision others have not; 
if it can be said of them as Cromwell said of his army. They 
know what they want and love what they know, they can 
afford to be patient and brave, remembering the words of 
John Fiske : " Keep pegging away; this is not an overintelli- 
gent age. " The swine dominates in the average man, and 
we know the hog — his ears are pulled off to get him to the 
trough, and his tail to get him away. 



II 

WAYS IN WHICH SOME NON-SPIRITUALISTS 
PREDISPOSE THEMSELVES UNFAVORABLY 
—HINDERING OPINIONS AND DISPOSITIONS 

I. That for intelligences who belong to another 
world and are back of our consciousness and beyond 
the control of our laws and police and public opinion, to 
be permitted to interfere with the affairs of this world 
would endanger our free-agency. 

This interference is denounced as " control by a superior 
force," an "impertinence," a "battering down of the accus- 
tomed order of things," the application of "a spiritual dyna- 
mite to our ideas of the universe, of God, of our relations to 
our fellows," " a general disintegration and unhinging of our 
free will as applied to ourselves and the affairs of earth." 

If all this be true, the objection is conclusive, for that 
which destroys free will destroys liberty, and with that gone, 
nothing in existence is worth the having ; hence, as the uni- 
verse works for good, the spirit hypothesis must be erroneous. 
We come into consciousness, says Emer- 

•^^p^ son, on a stairway. It is for us to say whether 

a Free Agent. ^^ ^'^^^^ S^ "P ^^ down. Good is the free 
will choosing of what is right ; evil is the free 
will choosing of what is wrong. No dagger can injure my 
individuality except sin ; and no hand can wield that dagger 
except mine. 

" Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage." 

The subjection of the higher nature to the lower, the lack of 
love for our fellows, for truth — these are bars out of which 
our prisons are made. We can not think, try as we will, of 

38 



INDIVIDUALITY INVIOLATE 39 

this being otherwise on either side of the grave — that is, if 
we really think. 

As there is but one God, the moral universe must be a 
unit. Its framework is truth, goodness its steel skeleton. 
Rust can never corrode it ; fires never melt it ; age never 
cause decay, nor weight bend it. 

No one living on earth can affect the character of another 
except by the other's consent. 

Christ met two blind men who desired Him to cure them 
(Matt. ix. 27-31): "Believe ye," said He to them, "that I 
am able to do this .-* " This was not idle talk, no device for 
compliment, but an effort to secure the active consent of 
their subconscious mind. This real self, which dominates 
in us all, replied : " Yea, Lord." When He had secured this 
free consent of their unconscious minds, He said, " Accord- 
ing to your faith," your free consent, " be it unto you "; and 
He added : See that you do not speak of this before others, 
for they may deride your credulity and lead you to doubt the 
reality of this cure, and thus your consent will be weakened 
and you relapse. There was not a single thing done by this 
Ambassador from the spirit world, Christ, in violation of the 
free-agency of these blind men. 

When Christ and the apostles lived, spirits held direct 

communication with earth. Moses and Elias, who had passed 

from earth hundreds of years before, were with 

Christ on the Mount and talked with Him Intramundane 

about things that were shortly to take place at . °f^'^^', 
° J ^ nications m 

Jerusalem. Angels rolled back the stone and Bible Times, 
met the women at the sepulcher, and came to 
Paul and Peter in prison. In what way did the spirit com- 
munications violate free will } After the days of the apostles, 
spirit communication became largely a memory, a tradition, 
an argument. Was this loss of spirit communication neces- 
sary? If spirits once communed without injury to man's 
liberty, why not now, and now as then supply such facts as 
proof of the existence of the immaterial world } 



40 SERVICE MEASURES GREATNESS 

Why should it seem unreasonable to us that there are in- 
telligences immeasurably above us who are producing great 
results on earth, back usually of our consciousness, in har- 
mony with the laws of evolution and of free-agency ? Why 
is it necessary to believe that this is the first series of evolu- 
tion? Is it not more reasonable to believe that there has 
been a countless series of them ? Eternity is a long while — 
no beginning, always an eternity, count from when you will, 
count forward or backward. Who can think of a past eter- 
nity in which nothing took place ? May there not be spirits 
who have been evolving billions and billions and cycles of 
trillions of years? Is it unthinkable — were we to accept the 
theory that Christ was not God — that one of these devel- 
oped spirits knew how to materialize as Christ 

Was Christ ^^^^ ^j^^ came into this world having power to 
a Materialized , . ^ ,. . , , , , . . , 

Spirit? ^^y down His body and to take it again; that 

He came down from the Father, to reveal the 
Father and exalted spirit life to man ? It is not what God 
kas that makes Him God, but what He gives. It is not the 
power a spirit has over us that makes it an exalted spirit, but 
his ability to unfold the free individuality of those below him. 
It is compassion, love, that is the measure of greatness in the 
inner world ; and compassion, love, work not toward bondage, 
but toward freedom. The truth makes us free. It is this 
spirit that dwelt in Him that makes the life of Jesus the 
gentlest memory of the ages ; and this that makes that mem- 
ory age toward youth — 

"The ages sweep around Him with their wings, 
Like angered eagles cheated of their prey." 

Here is a curious incident which I witnessed in a stance- 
room. In the circle was a Mr. L., whose wife was dead. 
Mr. L. was an ardent Spiritualist and was having a conversa- 
tion with what purported to be the spirit of his wife, when 
we heard from the cabinet a protesting voice, saying, " Don't, 



A CURIOUS INCIDENT 41 

don't ! " and the voice of a " negro spirit " known as " Aunt 
Eliza " began talking, and it appeared that Aunt Eliza had 
crowded out the spirit of Mrs. L. Mr. L. protested, telling 
Aunt Eliza she must not do this, and the following conversa- 
tion took place : 

Aunt Eliza : " Oh, I wanted a chance to talk." 

Mr. L. : " But my wife was talking first, and you have a 
chance to talk every evening, and my wife has not talked for 
four weeks." 

Aunt E. : " It is all right. " 

Mr. L. : "But it is not all right; my wife always was 
considerate, modest, non-assertive, yielding. It seems that 
you use brute force on your side as well as do mortals 
on this." 

Aunt Eliza held the fort, but when she left she was curt 
and did not come back for weeks. 

If this was really what it claimed to be, a conflict of 

spirits, it seems that spirits retain their mentality, character, 

individuality, in crossing the death line, and 

the outer nature there as here can be domi- ^^® "^^^^ ^ 

, , , ., Conflict 

nated — the outer nature, but not necessarily ^^ Spirits ? 

the real, the inner nature, the true self. The 
individuality can be dominated neither here nor there. It is 
the universal teaching in the seance- room, as far as my ex- 
perience reaches, that man after death still has a body — an 
outer and an inner nature, a " spirit body," far more sensi- 
tive, subtle, and refined than the one he had on earth, invis- 
ible to earthly eyes, but as real as earthly bodies. The outer 
nature there as here may be oppressed, but the inner nature 
— the true self — there and here is forever inviolable, except 
by consent. 

If Spiritualism will be able to carry out the purpose that 
so-called spirits claim for it, in the near future other intelli- 
gences than men in the fiesh will participate in a large effec- 
tive way in human affairs — foreign intelligences who are not 
subject to earthly control in the same way as are earthly in- 



42 "SUBPENA GABRIEL" 

telligences. " Catch me if you can," said the dying Socrates 
to his friends. 

The breaking into this world of another world of intelli- 
, ^ „ gences who shall have influence over but not 

of Foreign ^^ responsible to us is a startling suggestion. 
Intelligences To believe ourselves to be in the presence of 
in Earthly other folks, folks who have not bodies as have 
we, and whose power we can not gage, con- 
fuses and dismays us. 

A lawyer was told by his client, who was a Spiritualist, 
that he had been visited by Gabriel in a dream and told cer- 
tain things. "Very well," said the lawyer, without looking 
up, " subpena Gabriel." Yes ; but how enforce your subpena ? 
Says Shakespeare's Hotspur, in reply to one who boasted 
that he could call " Spirits from the vasty deep," 

" Why, so can I or so can any man ; 
But will they come when you do call for them ? " 

We are asked to establish relations with foreign powers, with 
a foreign world. What is the bearing of those powers to- 
ward us ; what are their intentions ? 

But is this a correct statement of the case .-• Is it not 
the purpose of Spiritualism simply to make known to our 
consciousness a relationship that already exists, not to create 
that relationship.? Is it true that these spirits are not ame- 
nable to law, to the higher, the real law that governs — a law 
far more effective than ours, neither coarse nor clumsy, a 
law that never fails in its execution.-' The higher intelli- 
gences control absolutely and prevent the lower from work- 
ing harm, except to themselves; and even the self-inflicted 
harm, in a broad way, they overrule. The potent part of this 
foreign power is friendly. 

I repeat, the visible participation in earthly affairs of out- 
side intelligences is not new. The two men who visited 
Lot had power to pull Lot inside the door and close the door 
and strike with blindness the citizens outside, and yet these 



MAN'S BLIND CONCEIT 43 

two men were not amenable to the laws of Sodom. So 
Jesus was taken in the spirit and carried to the mountaintop 
and to the Temple; an angel struck helpless the band of 
Roman soldiers at the sepulcher, and spirits opened prison 
doors that had been closed by the governmental authorities 
and set free Paul and Silas. The spirit world does partici- 
pate, so this argument proves so much that, if true, it would 
compel us to let go many things that we already religiously 
believe. As says Milton : 

" Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." 

In our blindness and conceit we greatly overestimate our 
power of control on this earth. It is altogether likely that 
the system of law that governs the psychic world is per- 
fect and that this government already greatly influences on 
earth through the psychic powers of men. We are pressed 
upon from a thousand sides. Our consciousness is single- 
eyed, and that eye is very limited in its vision. Sooner or 
later we must put our hand into the hand of the Infinite, and 
like a little child suffer ourselves to be led. To do this is to 
be in the kingdom of God. 

Yet, on the other hand, with some there is already too 
great aptness to attribute to " foreign powers " the successes 
and failures in life. Benjamin F. Butler is said to have 
humorously chided Fate for so directing his affairs that in 
his later years he never had 

"a slice of bread, 
However good and wide, 

But that it fell on the sanded floor 
And always on the buttered side." 

A careful student of Mr. Butler's physical, mental, and moral 
make-up is apt to find in them very largely the springs of his 
mishaps. 



44 TRIVIAL "SPIRIT" TALK 

2. That these phenomena conflict with the commonly 
accepted ideas of death and the spirit world — are often 
commonplace, trivial, repellent. 

Among the many notes illustrative of this objection which 
I have preserved of " spirit talks," I take the following al- 
most at random. They have an earthly, familiar sound : 

Doctor R. : " Have you not a message for me to take to 
Professor H. ? " 

"No; let Professor H. come and get it. But I have 
something for j/ou. " 

" I wish to take a message to Professor H." 

" I have already told you, let him come after it. Well, 
some men go round and round a peg to which they have tied 
themselves, and think it an oak. I will give you nothing." 

A child control : " Mr. K., you are soon going far West 

— to California." 

Mr, K. : " It is true ; but how did you know that .? " 
Control: "Why, I just pulled it out of the top of your 

head " ; and the control laughed. 

One who was announced as a spirit and spoke for some 

time on the value of liberty of thought as more important 

than liberty of body, and of the cowardice of 

Thomas " a large part of the clergy " in not giving ex- 

, . „ , " pression to their full conceptions of truth, was 
satisfactory ^ ^ 

Memory. asked his name. He replied : " Why should 

I give it.? If I give it, it will prejudice you 

against the truths I have told you, for few can judge truth 

on its own merit." I said: "No, it will not prejudice us. 

Kindly let us have your name." 

Spirit, after a moment's hesitation : " My name is Thomas 
Paine." 

Thereupon I said : " If you are Thomas Paine, would you 
not give us proof of it .? " 

" In what way ? " 



"THOMAS PAINE'S" QUANDARY 45 

" Tell us the date of your birth, date of death, and where 
buried." 

" I shall tell you at your next meeting." 

" Can you not tell now ? If you wait until the next meet- 
ing, skeptics will be apt to say the medium consulted an 
encyclopedia and thus got these facts." 

" I will not consult an encyclopedia." 

" That may be, but how make the public believe that 
somebody did not if you postpone answer .-^ " 

After a silence of about two minutes : " I can not now 
remember. When spirits come within earth conditions, it is 
like an earth person entering a trance state. The faculties 
become benumbed. You can not realize the difficulties 
which we must surmount to communicate at all with those 
who are in the flesh. Good-night," 

This is a fairly good illustration of the unsatisfactoriness 
of not a little of the so-called spirit talk. 

On one occasion a " spirit " was speaking who we were 
told afterward by the control was Lucretia Mott. When 
asked her name she could not give it, and finally said : " I 
have forgotten my earth name." 

One who was recognized by a mother as her little girl 
who had passed from life several years before, called for her 
mother to come to the curtain. The mother asked if she 
might kiss her, "Yes," she said, "but you won't mind if 
my face is cold .-* " The mother kissed her, and told the 
circle that her face was cold as that of a corpse. This cold 
effect may be produced easily by a dishonest medium through 
rubbing a bit of ice or some chemicals on the face of the 
confederate who impersonates the spirit. 

Priests at these circles often appeared as rigidly Catholic 
as when on earth, and Protestant preachers as rigidly Prot- 
estant. 

A negro of the extreme Southern-plantation type came 
frequently through a New York medium whose circles I 
attended. She talked a broad negro dialect and was full 



46 VERY HUMAN 

of a very earthly negro humor. She often asked the circle 

to join her in singing " Jim Crow " and " Dixie Land," and 

at times would dance a hoedown; yet she 

A Negro would often surprise us by the strange incon- 

^^" ° gruity of "lofty talks." One evening she 

Human. said — it is quite likely that I do not give with 
exactness what seemed to be her perfect plan- 
tation dialect: "Iwantster tell y'all yo's got ter b'leibe 
in Gawd, kase my teacher, she lows ef we b'leibe in sump'm 
n'udder sho 'nough, we's gwine tu'n in an' be jes lak it some 
day." 

" Why, auntie," I said, " I thought you told us at our 
last circle that you did not know whether there was a God. " 

"No, I did'n say dat, n'udder; yo' ax me ef I ebber 
'seed' Gawd, an' I sez ' No'; kase dat's de trufe; I ain't 
nebber seed 'im. I sez I wa'nt bleeged ter prayhyah — whut 
I gwine pray fur.-* — I's got eber'ting I wants; I's jest chuck 
full o' happiness." 

" But, auntie, have you seen God t " 

"No, 'cose I ain't seed 'im; ain't nobody seed 'im 's I 
knows 'bout. My teacher, she say I gwine see Gawd some- 
time when I ' grows,' but I don' 'zackly know 'bout dat — 
kase I's done growed, an' I ain't seed 'im yit." 

A spirit control said to one who did not respond quickly : 
" If you are stupid we must pass you by." 

Glimpses of the spirit world as such talks reveal give 
the average man a recoil, a shuddering that is apt to end in 
disgust. If these are genuine spirit talks, we must recast 
our notions of much of the spirit world, for that world then 
is very different from what some of us were led to expect 
when we were taught to sing : 

I want to be an angel and with the angels stand, 
A crown upon my forehead, a harp within my hand. 

I must do a little moralizing here at the risk of being 
thought doing some special pleading, a " helping out the 



DEATH CHANGES LITTLE 47 

spirits," for right here I think we skeptics do much incon- 
clusive reasoning. 

We are shocked to find that spirits are folks just as we 
are, the same as they were when they lived on earth. 

These spirits seem to be altogether too natural and hu- 
man ; but what should we expect .-' Are we quite sure that 

we are right in believing that at death we are 

Character a 
changed instantly into angels; that there is Growth 

some magical virtue in death which transforms on Both Sides 

character ? Character is a growth, a slow °^ *^® 

growth, wholly dependent upon free choice. 

That is the invariable law of character growth in this life. 

Is this law changed at death ? Who can think of the growth 

of character except in harmony with this law.? The inner 

nature, the real self, by getting rid of this outer husk, may 

not thereby be able to change the law by which it here 

grows. Death may make spiritual growth more rapid, but is 

it at all probable that this growth will cease to depend upon 

our choice and effort ? 

Whether Spiritualism is true or false, is it reasonable 
to believe that spirits are omniscient or that they are alto- 
gether good.? We must not judge the "out- -j. j. 
put " of the seance- room too hastily. We ask Spirits 
a question, and we are surprised to find that and Lying 
the spirits do not know or that they prevari- Ones. 

cate, tell white and even black lies, that they mischievously 
lead us on wild-goose chases, and laugh at us just as folks 
in the flesh often do at one another. We say that we do 
not like this weakness in the spirit world; but what if this 
is one of the things that spirit communication is to teach — 
this one thing, that death does not change character ? 

There are many mansions in the spirit kingdom, quite 
likely many more than there are in this earthly kingdom. 
While in the flesh, men live in wholly different worlds. The 
ignorant do not get a glimpse of the learned. Darwin said he 
had ceased to have any interest in poetry, painting, music, and 



48 THE MANY MANSIONS 

yet these latter were the home worlds of Tennyson, Ruskin, 
Wagner. After these men slipped out of their husks, many 
of the marks by which they knew each other would no longer 
be seen. The Master said in effect to His disciples: "In 
my Father's house are many mansions. I will so develop 
you that you will be like unto Me and hence be where I am, 
and we shall recognize one another and be comrades one of 
another, for we shall be like one to the other. In that day 
many will say unto Me, Lord, Lord, whom I shall not know, 
for no man can be where I am who does not do the will of 
the Father and thus grow by exercise the faculties that make 
him like unto Me; for in that world what you are will de- 
termine your dwelling and recognition." 

Really when we come to think of it, what " sense or rea- 
son " is there to expect that a soul on entering the other 
world will break out a blaze of goodness, intelligence, ge- 
nius ? Neither analogy nor the law of the growth of our 
inner nature gives the slightest basis for this expectation. 

Our general idea of heaven makes personalities there as 

indistinct as the rivulets in the ocean. Common sense 

should be shot through our thinking about the other world. 

After all, why should we be shocked when 
Many , i , • • r n i ■,^ -, 

Mansions • ^^^" ^^^^ spirits are folks to be talked to, rea- 

Many soned with, exactly the same as mortals .■* We 

Personalities g^j-e apt to think of a dead man as either hence- 
Other World. ^^^^^ ^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^ 3.ngQl Quite likely he is 
neither, but is as he was, only now he is out- 
side of his earthly tabernacle, which was something our phys- 
ical senses could take cognizance of. He is a ghost; yes, 
but what are we but ghosts walking around clothed with flesh 
and skin .-* 

In John's account of the resurrection we read that Mary 
looked into the sepulcher and saw two angels, one at the feet 
and one at the head where Jesus had lain, and they reasoned 
with her, and one of the angels was a young man, and when 
she had turned around she saw a man standing there in such 



HOW GOD IS SEEN 49 

a human fashion that she took him at first for the gardener. 

And when she finally recognized the Master, He said : 

" Touch me not ; for I am not yet ascended to my Father, 

. . , my God and your God." Yet He had passed the death 

line. He, notwithstanding, had come again upon the plane 

of the physical senses and was recognized as a 

man. He had not ascended to the Father. It Spirit 

required some other ascent through the spirit •Descent 

, ^ . . 1 1 T- 1 ^ Complicated 

spheres for a spirit to reach the Father. Transaction. 

Hence "Aunt Eliza" may not have been so 
absurdly wrong when she declared that tho a spirit she had 
not seen God. For a spirit to come down from the Father 
and to ascend to the Father is a complicated and comprehen- 
sive transaction — not simply the passing of the death line, as 
we usually think. The pure in heart see God. To become 
pure in heart is a stupendous change. Who can analyze 
the process ? Who can measure the distance between purity 
and impurity .'' Existence becomes more and more compli- 
cated, every step upward. 

It was very, very hard for Laura Bridgman and Helen 
Keller to grasp the thought that there was another world, 
that beside their world of touch and smell and taste there 
was a world of sound and sight and of intelligence far greater 
than their world and that interpenetrated their own. When 
the walls of darkness first began to give way the thought 
quite likely seemed to them uncanny, unreal. But then 
other intelligences did exist, and it was a complicated matter 
for father, mother, friends, to make themselves known, to 
communicate with these unfortunates, to enter their world. 

Why then should the thought be an a priori absurdity 
that we too are in a dungeon, and that another world of 
intelligences is in contact with our own — a world of men 
and women like ourselves, with other senses doing duty, 
senses which we have in rudimentary form — a world that 
interpenetrates our own .■' 

Seeing the multitude the king had sent out against them. 



so HELEN KELLER'S EXPERIENCE 

the servant cried to Elisha, " Alas, my master ! how shall 
we do? And he answered, Fear not; for they that be 
with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha 
prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he 
may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young, man, 
and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses 
and chariots of fire round about Elisha." * 

What if these other intelligences are thus real and are 
asking us to exercise the common sense exercised by Laura 
Bridgman and Helen Keller, exercised by them greatly to 
their advantage and to the everlasting credit of their intelli- 
gence .'' 

Is not he alone the wise skeptic who, in an affair of such 
moment as this possibly may turn out to be, scrutinizes again 
and again the foundations of his skepticism ^ 

3. That these phenomena are the work of conjurers. 

I know that there are men so skilled in sleight-of-hand 
and in ventriloquism that they can outwit my eyes and ears 
and make seem true what is not. How am I to know that 
the medium I am watching is not a trickster who has learned 
the art of jugglery? Am I to believe every trick a truth 
simply because I can not understand it ? 

I have sat before Signor Blitz and Hermann and Harry 
Kellar and could not explain one trick in ten, yet I knew that 
they were tricks. Kellar was before the Seybert Commission 
of the University of Pennsylvania, and gave exhibitions in 
slate-writing which they could not explain, 
Ease with ^j^-j^q ^iq told them in advance that what he 
Conjurers would do would^ be simply tricks. 
Deceive. There is much force in this objection — 

that the average man is no match whatever for 
a tricky medium who has had years of experience in prac- 
tising sleight-of-hand. I have seen many, many so-called 

I a Kings vi. 15-17. 



SLEIGHT-OF-HAND 51 

mediums of this description who easily deceive the " elect " 
Spiritualist — the man who does not object to being fooled 
— and even many a man who makes loud boast that his 
"eye teeth are cut." There are tricks of the juggler here 
in profusion, but is there anything else ? This is a question 
that professional conjurers should be able to answer much 
better than laymen, especially those conjurers who by their 
expertness have secured world-wide reputation. 

What say they .-' 

Professor Sidgwick, of Cambridge University, England, 
and for many years president of The Society for Psychical 
Research, said : ^ " We can no longer be told offhand that all 
the marvels recorded by Mr. Crookes, Professor Zollner, and 
others are easy conjuring tricks, because we have the uncon- 
trovertible evidence of conjurers to the contrary." 

That there is a force here that baffles conjurers the fol- 
lowing would seem well-nigh conclusively to show : ' 

Testimony of Robert Houdin. 

[A half century ago Robert Houdin was the leading prestidigitator 
in the world ; he was perhaps the greatest who has ever lived.] 

The Marquis Endes de Mirville published during the lifetime of 
Houdin two letters from the latter, in his " M^moire address^ k MM. les 
membres de I'Acaddmie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, sur un grand 
nombre de phdnom^nes merveilleux int^ressant ^alement la Religion, la 
Science, et les hommes du Monde," in which the conjurer confesses his 
inability to explain the phenomena he witnessed in the presence of Alexis, 
the clairvoyant. A circumstantial account is given of M. de Mirville 's 
visit to Houdin for the purpose of engaging him in this investigation, of 
the latter's confidence in his own ability to detect the trick, and of what 
took place at the seance, the conditions of which were entirely under 



' S. p. R. Reports, vol. iv., Part x., p. 102. 

'These statements of Houdin, Kellar, and Bellachini were collected by Rev. 
Stainton Moses and after careful examination were published by him in his paper 
Lights London, December 12, 1885. In a recent letter to me E. Dawson Rogers, the 
present editor of Light, referring to the compilation of these letters by Mr. Moses, 
says that Mr. Moses was a very cautious man, and "his accuracy in these letters 
can be be relied on." F. W. H. Meyers in his great work, " Human Personality," 
speaks in the highest terms of the integrity of Mr. Moses with whom he has been 
for a long while closely associated. I am not aware that a denial has anywhere 
appeared of the authenticity of these letters. 



52 HOUDIN ASTONISHED 

Houdin's control. This account extends over twelve pages, and its accu- 
racy is confirmed by Houdin in the first of the documents now translated : 

" Altho very far from accepting the eulogies which M. is good 

enough to bestow upon me, and especially insisting that I am not at all 
committed to opinions either in favor of magnetism or against it, I can 
nevertheless not refrain from declaring that the facts above reported are 
entirely correct (sont de la plus complete exactitude), and that the more 1 
reflect upon them, the more impossible I find it to rank them among those 
which belong to my art and prof ession. 

" 4th May, 1847. Robert Houdin." 

A fortnight later, M. de Mirville received another letter, in which the 
following, referring to another seance, occurs : 

" I have, therefore, returned from this seance as astonished as it is 

possible to be, and persuaded that it is utterly impossible that chance or 

skill could e^ier produce effects so wonderful {tout a fait impossible que le 

hasard ou Vadresse puisse jamais produire des effets aussi merveilleux). 

" I am, monsieur, etc., 

"May 16, 1847. (Signed) Robert Houdin." 

Testimony of Harry Kellar. 

Harry Kellar, a distinguished professor of legerdemain, investigated 
the slate-writing phenomena which occurred in the presence of Mr. 
Eglinton, at Calcutta, in January, 1882, and on the 25th of that month he 
addressed a letter to the editor of The Indian Daily News, in which he 
said : 

"In your issue of the 13th January I stated that I should be glad of an 
opportunity of participating in a seance, with a view of giving an unbiased 
opinion as to whether, in my capacity of a professional prestidigitator, I 
could give a natural explanation of ^effects said to be produced by spiri- 
tual aid. 

" I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Eglinton, the Spiritualistic me- 
dium now in Calcutta, and of his host, Mr. J. Meugens, for affording me 
the opportunity I craved. 

"It is needless to say I went as a skeptic, but I must own that I have 
come away utterly unable to explain by any natural means the phenomena 
that I witnessed on Tuesday evening. I will give a brief description of 
what took place." 

After describing several successful experiments, Mr. Kellar proceeds : 

" In respect to the above manifestations, I can only say that I do not 
expect my account of them to gain general credence. Forty-eight hours 
before I should not have believed any one who described such manifesta- 
tions under similar circumstances. I still remain a skeptic as regards 



PRESTIDIGITATION INADEQUATE 53 

Spiritualism, but I repeat my inability to explain or account for what 
must have been an intelligent force that produced the writing on the slate, 
which, if my senses are to be relied on, was in no way the result of trick- 
ery or sleight-of-hand." 

On the 30th of the same month Mr. Kellar addressed another letter to 
The Itidiatt Daily News, reporting some experiences of another kind with 
Mr. Eglinton, and regarding which he said : 

" In conclusion, let me state that after a most stringent trial and strict 
scrutiny of these wonderful experiences I can arrive at no other conclu- 
sion than that there was no trace of trickery in any form, nor was there 
in the room any mechanism or machinery by which could be produced 
the phenomena which had taken place. The ordinary mode by which 
Maskelyneand other conjurers imitate levitation or the floating test could 
not possibly be done in the room in which we were assembled." 

These letters of Kellar's were written after several 
" exposures " had been published of the ways in which Eglin- 
ton performed his "tricks." 

Shortly after the arrest and conviction in England of the 
famous medium, Henry Slade, some influential people in 
Berlin, several of whom were members of the aristocracy, 
requested the court prestidigitator, Bellachini, to have pri- 
vate sittings with Slade and report whether or not his phe- 
nomena were sleight-of-hand tricks. The published affidavit 
of Bellachini as given below created widespread comment : 

Testimony of Samuel Bellachini. 

Court Conjurer at Berlin. 

" I hereby declare it to be a rash action after only one sitting and the 
observations so made to give decisive judgment upon the objective 
medial performance of the American medium, Mr. Henry Slade. After 
I had, at the wish of several highly esteemed gentlemen of rank and posi- 
tion, and also for my own interest, tested the physical mediumship of 
Mr. Slade, in a series of sittings by full daylight, as well as in the eve- 
ning in his bedroom, I must, for tlie sake of truth, hereby certify that the 
phenomenal occurrences with Mr. Slade have been thoroughly examined 
by me with the minutest observation and investigation of his surround- 
ngs, including the table, and that I have not in the smallest degree found 
anything to be produced by means of prestidigitative manifestations or 
by mechanical apparatus ; and that any explanation of the experiments 
which took place under the circumstances and conditions then obtaining 



54 "SPIRITS" CONTRADICTORY 

by any reference to prestidigation is absohitely impossible. It must rest 
with such men of science as Crookes and Wallace in London, Perty in 
Berne, Butlerof in St. Petersburg, to search for the explanation of this 
phenomenal power and to prove its reality. I declare, moreover, the 
published opinions of laymen as to the ' How ' of this subject to be pre- 
mature and, according to my view and experience, false and one-sided. 
This, my declaration, is signed and executed before a notary and wit- 
nesses. (Signed) Samuel Bellachini. 
"Berlin, December 6, 1877." 

Professor Carpenter, an expert lecturer on hypnotism and 
practical demonstrator, well known throughout the United 
States, was convinced that there was a radical difference be- 
tween the hypnotic state and the state of a medium in a 
trance. Professor Carpenter finally announced himself a be- 
liever in the reality of Spiritualism. 

On the other hand, there have been conjurers, as Maske- 
lyne and Cook, who claimed ability to duplicate the phenom- 
ena produced in the presence of mediums ; and many conjurers 
during the past half-century have made exposures of me- 
diumistic tricks a drawing-card. The Society for Psychical 
Research records a number of these exposures. Spiritualists 
claim'that these are not duplications, but imitations and coun- 
terfeits, as were the magicians' tricks before Pharaoh, to 
bring into contempt the marvels which Moses wrought, 

4. That communications from the seance-rooms are 
often contradictory to each other. 

Within twenty-four hours of the time Thomson J. Hud- 
son (the author of "The Law of Psychic Phenomena ") died, 
a friend, whom I had requested to attend a circle in Chicago, 
was told by "a spirit control" that Hudson had just passed 
into the spirit world and was so confused that 
Thomson J. " he had to be treated in a hospital." After- 
Hudson ward I inquired at a circle in New York as to 
Returned ^j^^ ^^.^^j^ ^f ^j^-g j^^^ answer was: "Not 
Since Death P , ,.,.,. , 

so ; he can not be in a hospital, for no such 

treatment is given spirits that come over from earth. Every- 
thing here is so easily understood and so natural that no one 



"YES" AND "NO" 55 

is bewildered." A friend tells me that at a Boston circle 
" Hudson himself appeared and expressed regrets for the great 
mistake he made in his denial of spirit communication." 
This also was within a few days of his death. He evidently 
got through in a short time with his hospital experience. 

At stances I have witnessed contradictions of which the 
following is typical : 

Spirit control : " Dr. F , I see that you are crowded 

in that comer." 

" Yes ; can you see me clearly ? " 

"Oh, yes." 

" Can you tell me what I have in my hand .■* " 

"No; I can not see it distinctly." 

" Look again; I have my hand now open." 

" I can not be sure, as I do not see perfectly in your at- 
mosphere." 

A gentleman was present with me at a circle in New 
York, having with him his little daughter. His wife, lately 
deceased, was announced as present, and soon appeared in 
materialized form in front of the curtain. The little daugh- 
ter was called up and kissed. The husband was also called 
to the curtain, and he greeted the form as that of his wife. 
This " spirit wife " also greeted me as one who had been 
acquainted with her when in the flesh. 

The following Wednesday, at another circle in the same 
city, the husband and myself being present, we were greeted 
by the supposed spirit of the same wife and mother. When 
asked if she had appeared to us at another circle the previous 
week, she said : " No, I was not there." Evidently some of 
these "spirits " "drop stitches." 

There seems to be a Babel of voices in the beyond as well 
as here. Every phase of theological doctrine 
appears to have its advocate — except possibly f v ^ ^ 
that of endless punishment. The brotherhood 
of man and the Fatherhood of God every " spirit talker " 
believes in and advocates with enthusiasm; but when it 



S6 BABEL OF VOICES 

comes to Christ's miraculous birth, the atonement, and the 
full inspiration of the Bible, there is a division almost as well 
marked as we find on this side of the grave. 

It is hard to get rid of the thought that the Zeitgeist 
largely determines the talk. To one who accepts the Spiri- 
tualistic theory this must be a disappointment. With death, 
most of us think that we shall be rid of these battles. " Here 
we see through a glass darkly, " but not so there ; that has 
been our belief. 

What is the best explanation Spiritualism can give of 
this lack of consistency and unanimity beyond the grave .-^ I 
put the matter before a spirit control, with the following 
result : 

Question : " Are we not justified in concluding a medium 
to be fraudulent if the utterances concerning the spirit world 
that come through her are contradictory.'* " 

Answer : " No ; it may be simply a mistake. The spirit 
world is not some great temple or other place that can be 
measured with mathematical precision, to be 
A Spirit reported with exactness ; it is a life, a condi- 
xp^a ion ^j^^^ ^ growth, an experience. What a man 
tradictions. sees depends very much on what he is. How 
could a horse report the inner life of a Mozart, 
or a Mendelssohn, or a Shakespeare .-* No two men could pos- 
sibly give the same portrait of the inner life of a third man. 
No one truth contradicts another truth. All facts are recon- 
cilable with each other, but our interpretations of truths or 
facts do often contradict." 

Hence, if we are to believe this control, and what he says 
seems reasonable, a contradiction may be proof only that a 
mistake has been made, but not certain proof that spirits are 
not talking with us. Take this illustration from Helen 
Keller's early life. She got often wrong information, more 
often wrong impressions through her means of communica- 
tion, which were clumsy and uncertain. It was a Babel of 
voices also that came to her from this, to her, the unknown 



IS MEDIUMSHIP HURTFUL? 57 

world of mankind. Voices contradicted each other; some 
sought to deceive her ; some were wicked, all intensely hu- 
man. Had she given up in disgust and said : " I shall have 
nothing to do with this medium of communication; it is un- 
trustworthy if it is not wholly a deception or a delusion " — 
had she decided thus she would have been foolish and re- 
ceived immeasurable loss. Her remedy was to "try" the 
human voices, and learn to distinguish the good from the 
bad, the wise from the foolish, and also learn to improve the 
means of communication. 

If Spiritualism peradventure turn out to be true, the apos- 
tle's remedy is the right one, "try the spirits," "discerning" 
the good and the bad, the wise and the foolish. 

5. That Spiritualim, if true, is hurtful to the medium, 
since mediumship requires self-surrender to other per- 
sonalities. 

The theory of mediumship is that a spirit outside of the 
flesh has the power to enter the body of the medium and 
control more or less completely her organism. It is easy to 
believe that it is extremely dangerous for a person, especially 
one ignorant of the laws of mediumship, to abdicate her 
crown to another even for a limited time. There are recorded 
instances of the subject of a hypnotist becoming his slave. 
This would seem to be no less a danger if the hypnotist be 
outside of the flesh. 

Yet may not one who understands the laws of medium- 
ship safely make for a limited time this surrender ? There 
are those who have made a special study of mediumship who 
claim that this may be done with safety and even to advan- 
tage. Officers of the Society for Psychical Research tell us 
that Mrs. Piper, after sixteen years of service for them as a 
trance medium, seems now to possess a stronger individual- 
ity and better mental and physical health. 

It is safe to surrender our will to the divine will and let 
that will control. "In that day," says Christ, "ye shall 



58 COMMUNICATION DIFFICULT 

know that I am in you, and ye in me." God is in us " to 

will and to do of his good pleasure." May there not be an 

obsession that is legitimate and helpful ? But, 

Can One gays one, God's control is one thing ; the con- 

rt .L 1 -.Tr-2.^ trol by a finite creature is another. Yet sup- 
Control With- -I ^ 

out Harm P pose that this finite creature is good, that he 
has surrendered himself absolutely to God's 
control; is his control then any more hurtful than is God's.-* 
If Spiritualism be true, this is a subject that should receive 
most careful study and the medium should be safeguarded in 
every way by most careful provisions. 

I submitted this question to a " spirit control " who 
seemed to be of an unusually intelligent and exalted nature. 
This — the thought, was his answer, not necessarily the lan- 
guage ^ : 

" There are laws that govern mediumship on the earth side 
and on the spirit side that must be observed or there is con- 
stant danger of injury. It is with great difficulty that we 
put ourselves in physical contact with mortals, and we can 
only do this through a sensitive ; that is, through a mortal 
who is so negative as to respond easily to thought-waves. 
There is an ocean of what we may call thought- ether, as 
there is an ocean of matter- ether. The matter-ether, as you 
know, is sensitive to light vibrations — billions of waves in a 
second of time — and lo waves of electricity, and to what you 
call .^--rays. There are far more subtle matter-waves than 
any of these. Now in the thought world there are also waves 
far more subtle than the subtlest of matter-waves. I speak 
in this way that you may understand what I mean by anal- 
ogy. Strictly speaking, thought-ether and matter-ether are 



1 As mentioned in the Preface, of some of these "talks" by the controls or 
spirits I jotted down in the darkened seance-rooms sufficient words to recall 
the leading thoughts — at the best, it was reporting under unusual difficulties — of 
others, I had to trust wholly to my memory, writing out the " talks " of both sort 
immediately afterward. I have a memory that has a reputation with my editor- 
ial friends of being unustially retentive oithouglits^ but it is a poor verbal memory. 
The reader may rest assured that the thinking in these reports is the spirits', but 
the verbal garb is quite likely at times to be more or less my own. 



THE SAFEGUARD 59 

radically different; but nevertheless there is a likeness. 
There are vibrations, subtle, effective — vibrations in the soul 
world that are understood by all who are on the level of these 
vibrations, and understood instantaneously tho millions of 
miles intervene. Space limitations are as nothing in the 
thought world. 

" In conveying these thoughts to you in this audible way, 
it is essential that I have at my service some sensitive physi- 
cal organization that will enable me to convert my thought 
vibrations into matter-ether vibrations, and then on down to 
the coarse vibrations of the air which your physical ears 
interpret. 

" Now that quality of matter and spirit in this medium 
which I am using is a source of constant danger to her. 
It exposes her to control by any spirit in the flesh or out of 
the flesh unless she fortifies herself against such use. If she 
consent to being used by those who are morally and spiritu- 
ally below her, harm will come to her and may come to those 
who hear her unless they are on their guard; if she is used 
by those who are superior to her, good will come just so 
surely, and may come to all those who are in her circle. 

" This is what Jesus meant by faith in the higher powers. 
This faith is a surrender of soul, and if that surrender is 
directed to what is above, the soul will be lifted. Believe it 
with all your soul, and God and all the good infkiences in 
the universe will flow in waves into your soul and lift you. 

" I have urged you again and again to have confidence 
in the better forces in the spirit world, and to organize on 
your side to safeguard good mediums and bring 
into your atmosphere high spirits ; then we will Mediums 
organize on our side. Have an earnest desire safeguarded, 
to know the truth and a determination to fol- 
low it, and then the conditions will be of such a nature that 
nothing but good will come from this spirit communication. 

" The Church needs this more than I can tell you. The 
people must hear a note of spiritual certainty, or stiff eccle- 



6o "EVIL SPIRITS" 

siastical authority on one hand and materialism on the other 
will sweep over the world. Nothing can stay this tide but 
a new revelation from the spirit world, a revelation that is 
capable of scientific demonstration. This is a matter just 
now of profound study among spirits who are giving special 
attention to mortals. 

" I strongly advise that none among you, at least for the 
present, undertake the investigation of these spirit commu- 
nings, except those whose purposes are pure and who have 
had considerable training in psychic studies. But, on the 
other hand, do not listen for a moment to those who tell you 
that these communications are undesirable if possible, and 
impossible if desirable. That phrase is well fitted to catch 
the ear, but it contains no truth, 

" Ye earth men, put your hand in God's and walk bravely 
with Him in this matter. The darkness and the storm of 
materialism are about you, but out of the eternities you can 
see the spirit world walking toward you. Do you cry out 
in alarm that this is contrary to all you have heretofore seen ? 
Look up and believe, O ye of little faith ! Hark, all ! Do 
ye not hear the voice : ' Be of good cheer, it is I ' } Be not 
afraid, and ye shall find when ye take aboard this new truth, 
stripped of all its deceptions and errors, and when it is fully 
appropriated, that the storm will end and the darkness will 
be over, and your ship will ride safely in a haven far more ex**^ 
cellent than any of which the world as yet has had vision." 

6. That they are the work of evil spirits. 

President Day, of Yale College, long ago said of Spiri- 
tualism : "Either nothing is in it or the devil is in it." 
Many other able thinkers, especially in the earlier history of 
these phenomena, were of the same mind, and there is much 
to justify this conclusion. 

Judge C , of New York, gave me the following descrip- ■ 

tion of an event that took place in his own house. One day 
Gerald Massey, the well-known English writer, was at din- 



UNDESIRABLE VISITOR 6i 

ner at the judge's house. At the table was a distinguished 

English medium. During the day this medium had attended 

court, where a murderer was on trial. The ^ ., 

Evil 

murder was one in which revenge was very Effects of In- 
prominent. " Suddenly, at the table," said the dulg-ing 

iudge, " the English medium became possessed K.evengeful 
J ^ ' ^ ^ Thoughts, 

of a most diabolical spirit. He grabbed a 

knife and said : ' I will kill. I will have revenge.' I took 

in the situation at once and spoke to him, saying : ' Hold ! 

You are among friends.' He replied bitterly: 'Friends! — 

there is no friendship, A friend shot me, murdered me.' 

' Yes, but he is not here. We are friends. Who are 

you .-* ' 

" Thereupon this obsessing spirit gave some facts about 
himself, and repeated : * I will have revenge. I was treated 
most brutally when I was on earth, and will have revenge 
upon mankind.' Then his eyes fell upon his clothing, which 
was the clothing of the medium whom he possessed, and he 
said: 'Where am I?' He examined his trousers and ex- 
claimed: ' These are not mine.' A most puzzled look came 
over the face of the medium. We reasoned with the spirit, 
and finally got him to go out, and then the ' spirit control ' 
of this medium took possession of him and he said : ' That 
was a dark one ; let this be a lesson. Never indulge low, ■ 
revengeful thoughts. Never even let them pass through 
your minds. This medium to-day at the court trial enter- 
tained those thoughts and this opened the door to spirits on 
that plane. Keep yourself and your thoughts loving, holy, 
and these evil influences can not enter in.' 

" It turned out that this revengeful spirit had lived in the 
colonial times when the knickerbocker trousers were worn, 
and when his eyes fell on the trousers of the medium, 
feeling that he was in that body, he was struck with the in- 
congruity between the trousers that he was accustomed to 
wear and these, and this made him hesitate and turned his 
attention elsewhere." 



6i IS THIS OBSESSION ? 

Judge C also told me of a lady medium who at a 

Spiritualist camp-meeting became possessed of an evil spirit. 

This spirit with loud oaths cried out : " I am 

Reasoning |^gj.g ^^^^ intend to stay." He was reasoned 

Dark Spirits. ^^^^ ^^^ finally consented to go and promised 

that he would not return, but in a few days he 

did return. The following conversation took place between 

a gentleman present and this spirit : 

Gentleman : " What ! are you here again ? " 

Spirit : " Yes ; and what is more, I intend to stay. " 

G. : " You promised not to return. Will you not keep 
your word "i " 

Sp. : " No ; I will not, and neither you nor the medium 
can help yourselves." 

"Suddenly," says the judge, "this gentleman fixed his 
eyes on those of the medium and in a commanding voice 
said : ' Go, go ! ' The medium was greatly agitated for a 
moment, and then was free. The spirit never after returned." 

Gerald Massey in my presence told a pitiful story about 
his wife, who was a private medium, being " obsessed by the 
spirit of a murderer." She suffered terribly through this 
delusion or fact, whatever it was. Massey had no doubt 
whatever that it was a case of possession by an evil spirit. 

A lady medium, who has for many years held the confi- 
dence of leading Spiritualists, gave me the following personal 
experience : 

" Once at a Spiritualist seance a spirit entered a medium 
who was near me, and, through the medium, cursed fright- 
fully, saying : ' I shall have my revenge. ' The possessed 
medium suddenly seized me and hurled me across the room. 
My friends were up instantly in my behalf. One began 
reasoning with the spirit, and asked what he meant. He 
replied : ' About a hundred years ago I killed a man, and I 
was hung, and I have ever since been trying to get revenge, 
and I will have it.' 

" * But how has this woman injured you } ' 



CONVERTED MEDIUM'S WARNING 63 

" ' She has not ; but I shall kill some one ! ' 
" My control took possession of me," continued the me- 
dium, " and began to reason with the spirit that possessed the 
other medium, and told the spirit how he was hindering 
himself by harboring such revengeful thoughts, that he held 
himself down and made himself wretched, and that if he 
tried to get rid of that evil passion and invited better thoughts 
he would rise. He began to be appeased, the tears ran down 
the face of the medium, and he said : * Let me come again 
and I will think over what you say, * In a few days he re- 
turned and said : ' You don't know the good that you have 
done. I am associated with many other revengeful spirits 
who have determined to get even with the human race. I 
have told them about my experience here and what has been 
said to me, and many of us have determined to listen to what 
you say and try to advance.' " 

The following letter is evidently from a very sincere man. 

It is one of many similar letters of which I have been the 

recipient during the past few months, I have 

had considerable correspondence with this gen- Warning from 

tleman, who resides in California and is a mem- 
has been a 

ber of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Medium, 
As he is intelligent and has had newspaper 
training, I have thought it well to give his letter, as typical 
of many others, nearly in full : 

" Pardon a letter from a newspaper man who knows by personal ex- 
perience the terrible truths of Spiritualism, It is a seductive investiga- 
tion in which you are engaged, but turn, I beg of you. 

" I was impressed by the marvelous demonstration of intelligence and 
power exhibited by the invisible beings that responded to the call of a 
medium in this city, and I desire to assure you that any test you may 
devise, such as the sending of a representative to ask of the spirits ques- 
tions only you and Mr. Beecher could answer correctly, will be produc- 
tive of the correct reply. Do not be deceived thereby. The depths of 
the cunning of these impersonating spirits are equaled only by their 
wickedness and by their desire to deceive. 

" Not until the phenomena were produced under my own hand and 
m^any notable tests were given me did I realize the truth. Many of the 



64 "I AM THE EVIL ONE" 

messages were clothed in language so sublime as to delight the intellect 
and to persuade me that I was conversing in reality with the spirits of 
tlie dead. They told me, however, as remarkable things in regard to my 
own life experiences as they did in respect to those of persons I had 
known in other years who have fallen asleep. It was evident that they 
might have assumed my name had I been dead, and that they could have 
given any test of which I myself would have been capable, without my 
participation, if those who had known me in life had been making in- 
quiries through a medium. 

" More rapidly than an expert stenographer would care to record their 
words, they conversed with me on subjects of engrossing interest ; but 
there was much falsehood, disagreement in testimony regarding the 
' spirit life,' and at times the most shocking blasphemy and expressions 
of a diabolically lascivious mind. These were written by my own hand, 
as I permitted it to be moved by the invisible agents, and my mind was 
clear and I was able to converse with the utmost ease, orally, mentally, 
or in writing, with these visitants from another world. 

"I was converted to Christianity when a child and for years I had be- 
lieved the Bible to be an inspired book, but I had lapsed into unbelief 
and for eighteen years I had been sinking deeper and deeper into skepti- 
cism. My personal religious experience and a conviction that the spheres 
could not be maintained in their harmonious relations without the exer- 
cise of omnipotent power convinced me that there was a God, but I had 
lost faith in Christ and in the inspiration of the Bible. 

" In my perplexity over the manifestations of Spiritualism occurring 

in the seclusion of my own house, I was forced to renew my study of the 

Scriptures. The teachings of my visitants centered in the idea of the 

conscious state of the dead and in the denial of the divinity of Christ and 

^j _ ,, the truth of the Bible. As I studied the text in different 

T-i -n rN „ versions and in the original Greek of the New Testament, 
Evil One." i ■, • . . 

my faith in Christ was renewed. My religious experi- 
ence came back to me, my heart burned with love to God and to my fel- 
low men, and I turned from the whole delusion of Spiritualism to the 
true and living God and to a belief in His Word. I was a changed man. 
The last message penned by one of my visitants was this : ' How you 
have made this a strange lane to the light ! I am the evil one.' 

" At various times similar admissions had been made. I began the 
investigation of Spiritualism without a belief in the existence of Satan, 
whom I regarded as the mere personification of evil in its abstract princi- 
ples. I left it with a definite conviction of his actual being and of the 
verity of the entire Scriptures. 

" The dominating power of modern Spiritualism is the devil, ' that old 
serpent,' whose trail is marked with ' signs and lying wonders and with 
all deceivableness of unrighteousness.' Nor need we fail to discern in 
the phenomena that both you and I have observed the ' strong delusion ' 
permitted by God to prevail among those who turn from His word and 
' believe a lie.' 



BIBLE TEACHINGS 65 

" As you value your soul and as you regard your responsibility to God 
for the influence you exert over your fellow men, do not identify yourself 
with this wretched tho seductive philosophy of Spiritualism, for it is a 
device of the enemy of mankind." 

There is a danger here that should not be minified. 

Spiritualists make a great mistake when they underrate 
the power of evil spirits. The greatest who ever mediated 
between this and the spirit world, Christ Jesus, said to Peter : 
" Satan hath desired to have you, . . . but I have prayed for 
thee that thy faith fail not." That Satan is a power that re- 
quired the help of Jesus to thwart when assailing so strong a 
personality as Peter is a fact of startling significance. Jesus 
again and again cast out devils who had seized " mediums " 
and so hypnotized them as to make them subject to their 
wills. 

Paul also, we are told by Spiritualists, was a medium of 
great power through whom exalted spirits spoke. What 
did he mean when he said, " Finally, my 
brethren, , . , put on the whole armor of God, ^"''il Spiritual 
that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of t> i a-o 
the devil; for we wrestle not against flesh and sonal. 
blood [the forces of this world which are appar- 
ent to our senses], but against principalities, against powers, 
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiri- 
tual wickedness in high places " — that is, against organized 
intelligences who are outside of flesh and blood, yet can have 
great power over us ? 

The Bible certainly teaches that evil spirits do communi- 
cate with men. 

" Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, 
I will entice him [Ahab]. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith? 
And he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his 
prophets [mediums]." And he so did, and prevailed (2 Chron. xviii.). ^^ 

But if evil spirits spoke through evil prophets, did not 
good spirits speak through good prophets ? What was the 
spirit of the Lord that at this time spoke through the good 
5 



66 THE AUTHOR WARNED 

prophet Micaiah ? Was it God direct or a spirit sent of 
God? God uses men to carry His messages to other men; 
why should we think it strange that He should use spirits to 
carry His messages to other spirits and to men? 

The evil spirits of which the Bible so abundantly speaks 
certainly had reality and personality. Christ cast them out 
and so did His disciples. Christ spoke to them, and when 
they went out of men they still had existence and power, as 
in the case of the legion that entered the swine. " When the 
[an] unclean spirit is gone out of a man " he gets seven others 
and returns, and does an evil work in that man. ^ Is it a cred- 
itable interpretation that would make a parable out of the ac- 
count of the casting out of seven devils from Mary Magdalene ? 
This way of reading the Bible would justify Erasmus in saying 
its interpretation " is like a nose of wax that can be molded 
for any face." 

We are told that the Bible forbids communings with 
spirits. 

A lady writes to me kindly from South Carolina : 

" I am sorry to see that the Dr. Funk whom I have so long admired 

has like Saul gone to consult the Witch of Endor. But he says he does 

not believe in Spiritualism. Neither did Saul, but he 

Bible was cursed all the same. Listen, my dear doctor, I beg 

Forbids Com- you, to Isa. viii. 19, 20: 'When they shall say unto 

muning- you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto 

with Evil wizards that peep, and that mutter : should not a people 

Spirits. seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the 

law and to the testimony : if they speak not according to 

this word, it is because there is no light in them.' 

" ' And oftentimes to win us to our harm, 
The instruments of darkness tell us trutlis ; 
Win us with honest trifles to betray us 
In deepest consequence.' " 

These considerations should have weight, but there are 
other considerations that should also have weight. 

Is it true that intermediaries are always an impertinence 
in our communings with God, since He is always ready to 

'Matt. xii. 43-45. 



"TRY THE SPIRITS" 67 

hear and to answer? Carry this out logically, then there 

would be no need of the earnest soul conversing with the 

preacher for instruction and help. Why Paul and the other 

writers of the Scriptures ? 

After Jesus had commanded Satan to get behind Him, 

angels came and ministered to Him; so also in the Garden 

of Gethsemane; on the Mount of Transfiguration came 

Moses and Elias, two men who had passed into the spirit 

world a thousand years before, and now talked 

„ . , , . , , , Also Good 

with Christ about things that were shortly to Spirits 

happen at Jerusalem, bringing quite likely Communed 
messages from the higher spheres; and two in Bible 
men came to Abraham and to Lot, and talked 
to them about what God intended to do, and these men were 
spirits. So on through the Bible to the time that angels 
visited Paul and Peter and talked to them ; and to the time 
angels talked to John in the Apocalypse.,, If God used in- 
termediaries from the spirit world in the past, why not now.-' 
Has God changed? If that method of communication was 
not unworthy of God two thousand years ago, can we be quite 
sure that it is now? 

We are commanded " to try the spirits." Why try them 
if they are all bad ? " Beloved," says John, " believe not 
every spirit "^ — that implies that there are some to be believed 
and some that are not to be believed ; " but try the spirits, 
whether they are of God." Says one with an effort to be 
witty : " By trying the spirits we get rid of the lying spir- 
its." 

Paul tells us that there is a diversity of spiritual gifts : 
To one man is given the gift of healing, to another the 
working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the dis- 
cerning of spirits, to another divers kinds of tongues. " Covet 
earnestly the best gifts" (i Cor. xii.). It will be observed 
that the power to discern spirits is a gift of the Holy 
Ghost. 

There are " ministering spirits," we are told, who are sent 



68 SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT 

forth " to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation " 
(Heb. i. 14). 

That God uses intermediaries to carry on His work be- 
tween the spirit world and this world would be in accordance 
with the way He does His work on earth. God, if spirit 
communication be true, is only refining, exalting His earth 
methods, known to us all. It has been said that Galileo con- 
tended that the world moves from the West to the East, but 
Darwin demonstrated that it moves from down to up. It is 
the supreme act of faith to believe in the unchangeability 
and goodness of God. As it was not against God's plan in 
Bible times for good spirits as well as bad to work among 
men on earth, why is it against His plan now? The posses- 
sions by evil spirits were then no more real than the pos- 
sessions by good spirits. If it be true, as one tells us, that 
" Spiritualism is a blast from hell," may it not also be true 
that it is a blast from heaven? 

It is difficult for one to attend a number of seances where 

the medium is pure and intellectual and the members of the 

circle are also of noble mind and heart, and 

Goodness the ^^^^ fg^ji g^^.^ ^Yia.t the intelligences communi- 

Best . „ . T -I -If 

Touchstone, catmg are well meanmg. In these circles of 

believers are often found well-developed Chris- 
tian characters. After all, goodness is the best detective 
of evil in the heart of another. No needle can be nearly 
so sensitive to the electric current as is a good heart to the 
presence of good or evil. Said the Master : " My sheep 
^now my voice. " The pure in heart knozv God, as the ar- 
tistic soul recognizes an artist or a musical soul a musi- 
cian. A spiritual soul has a spiritual discernment. Ye 
hypocrites, ye can discern the signs of the sky, but ye can 
not discern the signs of the times, the times when the king- 
dom of heaven is at hand, and yet ye profess to be spiritually 
developed. These Pharisees wished a sign from heaven, but 
Christ refused, for they had not the spiritual vision that 
would give them recognition of things that were spiritual. 



"GOOD SPIRITS" 69 

A medium may be evil, and yet the circle may be such 
as draws elevated spirits. It is an uncomely thing that 
connects the trolley-car with the wire overhead, but were it 
not for that uncomely thing the car would not move for- 
ward. Let us not come to hasty conclusions touching these 
matters. On the theory that all these intelligences in the 
s6ance-room are devils, it is hard to account for the fact that 
often there the wicked are urged to give up wickedness, the 
selfish to become charitable, and that revenge should give 
place to love. Christ when accused with being controlled by 
Beelzebub, replied, A kingdom divided against itself would 
fall. This is true now as then. 

At a stance at which I was present, a member of the cir- 
cle exhibited a bitter spirit toward one whose name had been 
mentioned and who had deeply wronged him. 

He said : " Never mind, I shall have my re- Spirits 

,, ^ 1 n • 1 1 , • • Exhortine to 

venge. One who claimed to be the spirit virtue 

control immediately responded, telling him 

"to love all people; revenge holds the soul down, hatred 

makes souls dark. In the spirit world souls are known by 

their color — yes, color expresses this thought, yet it is not 

that. Seek to cultivate those thoughts of good-will and 

helpfulness that make the soul bright. No, brother, never 

think of revenge. If you have an enemy, study hard how 

to be serviceable to him. Remember, the man who does 

wrong hurts himself a thousandfold more than he does the 

one he wrongs." 

At many seances deep concern on the part of " spirits " 
for the welfare of the sitters is manifest. If there is sick- 
ness reported, suggestions are made of cure. Frequently 
we hear such words as these : 

" See that there is no sorrow nor gloom in the circle. 
Some heart here is heavy — the vibrations are interfered with 
by heaviness of heart. Peace, love, good cheer, purity of 
thought, hope, faith in God make the right conditions for us 
to come to you. Above all things, free yourselves of selfish 



70 LIKE DRAV/S LIKE 

thoughts. These sink the soul in the spirit world like lead 
sinks the body in the sea. They repel from the circle the 
better spirits, and bring to you earth spirits and spirits from 
cycles lower than the earth ; there are cycles lower than the 
earth." 

Rarely are the spirits in the s6ance-room lawless, that is, 
free from restraint. Frequently we are told that " We are 
not permitted," "This is against the will of God," "Our 
teachers say " this or that, " We would not disobey our 
teachers." Of course, it is conceivable that an evil spirit 
might speak in this way to throw souls off their guard and 
gain access. Men do this on earth, and yet keen observers 
of human nature can distinguish the hypocrite. Possibly to 
train in this kind of work is what the apostle means when 
he urges us to " try spirits," that is, learn to distinguish the 
good from the bad. As Podmore urges, we should have care 
not to throw away the baby with the water for the bath. 

But were we to grant that these intelligences communi- 
cating are supramundane and are at times other than evil 
spirits, it does not follow that they are discar- 

Outside nate men, that is, men who have passed into 
^Y ^f^^^^' the spirit life. Why may there not be many 

What ? intelligences in the universe besides those who 
have inhabited the earth.-* This involves a 
stupendous question, that of the identity of the intelligences 
communicating. Should we settle it in our minds that there 
is spiritual communication between this world and the spirit 
world, this other question of identity remains, and this may 
turn out to be the more difficult problem of the two. 

Those who fully believe in the Bible should not find it 
hard to believe that Jmman beings out of the flesh do com- 
municate with earth. There is the story of the Witch of 
Endor calling up Samuel. Was this spirit that of Samuel 
or some evil spirit that personated \ivm.} If Samuel, it 
proves that the dead do live, can come back to earth, and can 
be ide7itified, have knowledge of what is taking place on earth, 



HASTY CONCLUSIONS 71 

retain their memories — or it proves that at least some of 
the dead do. The Bible story appears to justify this deduc- 
tion. It seems a strained interpretation that 
makes this an impersonation of Samuel by T^® Witcla of 

an evil spirit. Moses and Elias certainly did ^^. ^ . , 
^ ^ an Historical 

appear on the Mount of Transfiguration and Fact, 

were recognized. And the two messengers who 
came to Abraham and Lot to announce God's displeasure 
with Sodom and Gomorrah appeared to be Imman beings. 
At the crucifixion of Christ men rose from their graves and 
walked into the city ; and a young man was seen by Mary in 
the sepulcher, and this young man was a spirit. 

Yet if Spiritualism be true, there may be grave danger. 
Again and again I have heard repeated from the cabinet 
words like the following : " Character gravitates to its like : 
swine require no finger-board to find mud-holes and need not 
be urged to wallow in them. Throw your heart into the 
spirit world, and spirits after its kind are sure to find it and 
comrade it. Evil spirits are attracted to a circle of unclean 
persons as wire filings to a magnet. There are multitudes 
of imperfect, undeveloped spirits about the earth, an insectiv- 
orous plague ready to crovi^d in anywhere an opportunity is 
given." If this really is true, it is an evil of portentous mag- 
nitude, and should be guarded against intelligently and per- 
sistently. 

Yet one in union with God — in tinion with God — need 
fear no evil. Such an one if need be can give successful 
battle anywhere in the universe to the entire satanic army. 
He is not subject to devils, neither indeed can be, but is 
naturally, inevitably their master. As already urged — and I 
beg to be indulged in urging this same thought again and 
again — there can be no psychic invasions of human personality 
without consent. Personality is always and everywhere in- 
violable. 



72 NOT DISPROVED 



7. That these psychic phenomena have been con- 
clusively disproved. 

The able editor of the New York Christian Advocate, in 
a series of notable arguments on Spiritualism — notable but 
not conclusive — says that again and again these phenomena 
have been proved to be the result of fraud, and he dismisses 
them all with the Latin proverb, /^/jwj' in tmo,falszis in om- 
nibus — false in one, false in all. This controversial editor 
has a penchant for the use of sententious 
Falsus m XJno, p^j-ases, a brilliant gift that sometimes proves 

FalsUS r ^ ,. A i-riri^ 

in Omnibus ^^^^^ ^° logic. A savage chief who for the first 
time came into contact with the telegraph re- 
ceived a despatch which he found on investigation to be false, 
and he thereupon ordered the telegraph-poles cut down 
wherever found in his dominion, using a savage phrase which 
freely interpreted was "False in one, false in all," and hence 
his kingdom to this day is without the benefit of telegraphy. 
There may be many communing intelligences above, as 
many even as there are communing intelligences on earth, 
who send telegraphic despatches, some of whom on both 
sides of the death line are truthful and some, it may be, 
are deceivers, and some are honest but mistaken. 

A wave of the hand and such arguments as " a form of hys- 
teria," "another phase of witchcraft," "a creature of the 
imagination," "dreams," "phantasms," are no longer satis- 
factory answers to these phenomena to one who really has 
investigated them. 

It would not be hard to give a thousand psychic facts that 
not one of these descriptive epithets, nor all combined, can 
fully cover. 

A lawyer who is noted for his scholarly qualifications 
said to me recently : " It is to deny the shining of the sun at 
noon-time in a clear sky to deny that there are Spiritistic 
communications. You can not blot out a star with a fog 



AUSTIN PHELPS' WARNING 73 

bank. After all reasonable allowances for coincidence and 
fraud, every man accustomed to weigh evidence will be com- 
pelled to say, when he has weighed the facts 
in controversy, ' Here are well-authenticated coincidence 
facts so prodigious in number that they over- and Fraud 

whelm the mind.' " Dr. Austin Phelps, in his Theories In- 
..... . , . , , , , sufficient. 

brilliant essay m which he sought to prove the 

Satanic origin of Spiritualism, speaks of its facts after this 

fashion : 

" We should be unreasonable in a denial tn toto of the credibility of 
testimony as applicable to the phenomena in question. Believers in Bib- 
lical miracles on the evidence of testimony must not question the possi- 
bility of credible testimony to necromantic marvels. The Egyptians did 
something with their enchantments. The spectators saw what they saw. 
Come what may of it, eyes and ears and fingers are tough witnesses to 
facts. The eyes and ears and fingers of a hundred otlier men are of more 
value than the solitary evidence of yours or mine. We practise an un- 
conscious evasion of the point in logic when we say, ' I will believe when 
I see.' We lose vastly more than we gain by any a-^rz(5ir/ reasoning or 
by any very recondite reasoning against the blunt testimony of the senses 
of a regiment of men. 

" As little reason have we to cavil at the character of a certain portion 
of the testimony by which the toughest facts of Spiritualism are sup- 
ported. Some of that testimony, so far as it respects the sanity, the cul- 
ture, the integrity, and the opportunities of the witnesses, would convict 
a murderer in any court in Christendom, outside of New York City. 

" It is too late also to set down the Spiritualistic phenomena as only a 
revamping of old, or an invention of new, feats of jugglery. Their advo- 
cates are not to be censured if they decline to argue with a man who 
comes to them, as from the detective police, with the logic of invisible 
wires, and of sJeight-of-hand, and of leaden plummets concealed under 
crinolines. W_ might have been excusable for such innocence twenty- 
five years ago but it will not do now. Signor Blitz, who probably knows 
as much as most men of the capacities of jugglery, has been heard to say 
that nothing on record in the history of his profession could account for 
that class of facts on which Spiritualism chiefly builds. Robert Houdin 
also, who claims to be the inventor of most of the tricks performed by 
the fraternity of modem jugglers, has declared his inability to equal or 
to account for the so-called spiritual occurrences which he has witnessed. 
Similar testimony is borne by M. Hamilton, a Parisian expert in leger- 
demain, and by M. Rhys, a maker of the conjuring implements used by 
Houdin." 

Yet it is true that deception, duplicity, fraud of every 



74 HEARTLESS FRAUDS 

description surround and saturate Spiritualism. The ease 
with which a large proportion of the advocates of Spiritualism 
are duped and the depravity of some of the so-called mediums 
and their hangers-on, a depravity so extreme as to take advan- 
tage of the holiest sentiments and the most sacred griefs that 
the human heart knows, are reasons efficient if not sufficient 
for the contempt in which a very large proportion of the in- 
telligent public hold Spiritualism. An ordinary cheat, as a 
policy sharper or a three-card monte fraud, or other swindler 
in games of chance, is virtue itself in comparison with a me- 
dium who will take advantage of the unreason of grief to coin 
into ready cash the yearnings of a mother's heart for her 
loved one, who has passed beyond the valley of the shadow, 
or of a wife for a husband, or of a husband for a wife, or of 
a child for its mother. And this kind of humbuggery is con- 
tinent-wide, world-wide. 

I find in my notebooks records that show a variety of 

methods in conducting these frauds that is amazing. These 

frauds are practised mostly in what are known 

Variety of ^g materialization circles. The ways in which 
Mediumistic . , , , . , . , , , . 

Frauds. fraudulent mediums deceive the public are in- 
dicated by these entries in my notebooks I 
here give in the hope that some thoughtless investigators 
may be more upon their guard : 

1. A medium impersonated " a lady eight feet tall from the planet 
Mars " by the use of a wire bust with rubber over it, and a false face. 
This was so arranged that it fitted snugly upon the shoulders of the me- 
dium and was inflated with air when in use. When not in use it could be 
made into a small package and easily concealed. 

2. Four cork soles, each an inch and a half thick, arranged so as to 
be strapped to the bottom of the shoes ; these helped to impersonate per- 
sons of different height. 

3. Wire dummy covered with rubber, that could be inflated and made 
to represent in a darkened room the spirit form of a little child ; when 
deflated it could be folded and worn as a bustle by the lady medium. 

4. Phosphorescent clothing, made bright in spots with illuminating 
paint or phosphorescent oil ; a compound of phosphorus and ether is 
sometimes used for this purpose. This oil produces a faint light, and in 



"I AM HERE, PAPA" 75 

the dark, with bits of glass or paste diamond which reflect the dim light, 
makes an impressive appearance. This is used to represent " bright 
spirits." 

5. On one occasion I saw a star which had been cutout of paste- 
board ; the front of the star was covered with phosphorus, so that it 
glowed in a weird-like way. The card was mounted on a wooden cross 
some five inches high, and appeared on a "spirit" lady's head, who, I 
was told, desired to see me, "having been when on earth a particular 
friend " of mine. The fraud was transparent, but the same thing I have 
seen fool many people. 

6. Gauze dresses ; fine white tulle, sometimes lawn of pure white, 
takes but little space, and when thrown over a black dress, especially if 
it has been treated with illuminating oil, is effective. These white gauze 
dresses are sometimes so arranged that they can be lowered gradually in 
such a way that when on the floor the invisible black dress covers them. 
This represents dematerialization ; and then, as they are slowly lifted by 
a wire manipulated from the cabinet, the white again appears and the 
spirit is said to have rematerialized. 

7. False wigs and other false hair and false whiskers galore. 

8. Fine cambric cloth waved in the air, either by a jointed stick or by 
the medium's hand or the hand of a confederate (a person dressed in 
black is invisible in the darkness of the average stance-room), does well 
for what is called etherealization ; that is, a spirit materializing out in the 
open, in a way that makes it seem to have but little substance. When 
cleverly done this deception brings out many " Ohs ! " from the faithful 
in the circle. 

9. Dummy with white front and with a loose black cloth covering the 
entire back is often used for materializations and dematerializations. 
This trick is done by gradually lifting the dummy from the floor (see 6) 
so that the white appears, and then by letting it sink down again slowly 
so that the black covers it; the light is kept so low that unless one's eyes 
are particularly good it is impossible to detect the black form. It can 
be made to give the appearance of a spirit form that is standing out 
in the open, away from the cabinet, or sinking through the floor. The 
medium herself often alone performs this trick ; being dressed in black, 
she is not visible. Sometimes this fraud is perpetrated in a fairly bright 
light, and in that case a thin steel, jointed rod manipulates the dummy 
from the cabinet. A confederate dressed in black is at times utilized for 
this purpose ; sometimes a 'child is thus used — the child moves behind 
the circle, and suddenly throws off the black covering and appears a 
white spirit immediately behind some father or mother who has been 
inquiring for a dead child, and this little "materialized form " cries out, 
" I am here, papa! I am here, mama! " and then laughingly disappears 
in the same way it came, amid many exclamations of wonder that a ma- 
terialization and a dematerialization can thus take place " so far from the 
cabinet, with no chance whatever for fraud ! " 

10. Fraud-proof cabinets, set out sometimes in the comer of the room, 



76 "TESTS" EXCHANGES 

with no window or door behind the cabinet. Some of these I have 
known to be connected with a skilfully arranged trapdoor underneath 
that leads to a room occupied by confederates. On one occasion the 
passage was found to lead through a brick wall to the cellar, the wall 
being extra thick. In another instance the passage led between the 
floor of the sdance-room and the ceiling of the room below into a back 
room where there was another trapdoor, making a ready avenue to and 
from the cabinet. 

II. Invisible writings on slates, false bottoms to slates, etc., with ar- 
rangements for skilful sleight-of-hand by which slates are exchanged. 
The invisible writing on a slate is utilized in some such way as the fol- 
lowing: Just after the sitter has examined the slate, the medium spits 
upon its surface " to magnetize it," and rubs it quickly with his hand, 
and then turns the slate down and puts another one on top of it, after 
showing that the second one has no writing on it, just as the first had no 
writing on it. Then, after you hold the slates for a little while, you open 
them and find the first slate covered with writing. Wetting by spittle 
made apparent the writing, which until wet was invisible. There are 
many other ways of performing this slate deception. 



There is much other hocus-pocus. 

The swindling side of Spiritualism is organized to a sur- 
prising extent, if newspaper reports are to be believed. But 
I think these reports greatly overstate the matter. It is 
charged that there is a systematic exchanging of information 
by mediums; that is, information received by 

Exchange "pumping" a sitter in one circle is passed on 

of Tes'ts 
. to other mediums who belong to the ring or 

Mediums. trust, and the dupe is recommended by his 
" spirit friends " to see such and such mediums 
for additional information. These other mediums are wholly 
unknown to him, and quite likely he takes good care to go 
unannounced and is surprised by their knowledge of "the se- 
crets of his life," never dreaming that this information had 
been pumped from him at previous sittings with other me- 
diums. There are medium agencies that have representatives 
in different parts of the country, and when it is worth while 
these representatives get information concerning the family 
history of the sitter; and this is passed on to spring surprises 
upon him by telling him " what could not possibly be known 



MUCH MONEY MADE 



77 



to the medium." Facts are told that he had not thought of 
for years ; at times facts are told that were not known to him 
until he had inquired of friends who lived at the home of his 
childhood. Representatives of the medium agencies had 
quietly pumped dry these home friends before he had made 
his own inquiry. 

I caught a " spirit postmaster " at the shabby trick of 
opening sealed envelopes before the mucilage had time to 
dry. When I kept any of the envelopes so long that the 
mucilage had had time to dry I got no message, as "the 
power was exhausted." 

At a certain dark stance, all hands joined, I was sure the 

medium got together the hand of the sitter at her right and 

the hand of the sitter at her left and covered 

both with her one hand, and thus had her other Why I was 

hand free for "touching," or playing instru- , „.^^.^^® ^ ^ 
* ^ J ° to Sit Next to 

ments, etc. I did the same with the hands of a Medium, 
the sitters who were adjoining me; thereupon 
the lady next to me called out that she felt a hand on her 
shoulder. I therefore was invited to sit alongside the medium ; 
but I held the medium's hand so tightly that we got no mani- 
festations until finally she whispered to me : " I see you 
understand this; please let my hand free." I did so, and 
then the manifestations became abundant. 

The above are a few of many experiences of this sort of 
which I have made note. 

But, it may be asked. How can it pay mediums to support 
the expensive machinery necessary to carry out swindles as 
extensive as are some of those described above.** It at times 
pays largely. At one circle an elderly man was led by " spirit 
direction " to transfer a home in a large city to a medium ; this 
residence was said to be worth ^50,000. Another "sitter" 
was persuaded to give ^10,000 to the "good cause" of re- 
lieving a medium from financial embarrassment. Other in- 
stances of communications turning to the financial benefit of 
mediums I give on another page. 



78 SCOUNDRELISM WRIT LARGE 

Like instances have been kept quiet by the victims and 
their friends to avoid scandal or public laughter. 

This is the dark side, and it is very dark ; but is there 
not another side ? If so, it should also appear. To say that 
the development of Spiritualism at every stage of its growth 
has not been marked by most saddening frauds is in the 
teeth of historic accuracy. Scoundrelism is writ large on 
many, many pages of its history. But need no other ex- 
planation ever be given when a spiritualistic phenomenon is 
witnessed, except that somebody lies .-' 

It is not sound reasoning to say : " I saw fraud in a 

seance-room ; therefore there are no genuine phenomena." 

There is much deception, trickery, fraud ; but 

Trickery ^^ there not something else.-^ The genuine 

Tes ; but diamond loses nothing of its value because of 

there is Some- ^.j^g f^^^^ ^■j^g^^ there are a thousand imitation 

thing Else. . . 

diamonds to one genuine. It is an assump- 
tion of omniscience to relegate to fraud all things in a 
stance-room that we can not otherwise explain. A " spirit 
control " put it sharply thus : " A fool saith in his heart that 
all phenomena are frauds, and a fool of an equal amount of 
insight saith, ' There never has been a " rap " of intelligence 
from the spirit world.' He may say correctly, ' I never 
heard one,' but that is to sa}'- a different thing." 

The subject is far deeper than is reached by the fraud 
hypothesis. If one has not got beyond that, he has yet to 
pierce the crust of the problem. 

The writer of a letter asks : " Is it then so hard for you 

to believe that somebody lies } " It is very hard for me to 

believe that the very large number of men and 

Beecher's women required by this hypothesis lie — men 

Belief, " There ^j^^^ women of whom very many are of excel- 

is Some- 
thina- in It." ^^^^ repute. Henry Ward Beecher, not long 

before his death, said to me : " What makes 

me believe that there is something in Spiritualism is not 

what I see at the public seance-room, but what I know takes 



WHY BEECHER BELIEVED 79 

place in the homes of many of my friends, whose mothers 
and wives and children are the mediums." If conscious 
fraud is the explanation of all these phenomena, it is the 
most inexplicable, gigantic, heartless swindle of the ages. 

Is it irrational to say that if scores of thousands of people 
of average intelligence in our civilized countries believe in a 
thing for half a century, we may be sure there is something 
there.'' Eagles do not circle around and around nothing; 
even flies do not. There is argument in the fact that Spiri- 
tualism has held its ground against the countless exposures 
of fraudulent mediums. An explanation to be satisfactory 
must be consistent with our knowledge of human nature, 
must be rational, must match all around. 

On the fraud theory, the life of every medium is a sus- 
tained deceit, a coarse, hateful deception. Such mediums 
are ghouls who tear open the graves of the dead, feed on 
sacred affections, on the heart's blood of their fellows, many 
of whom are life-long friends. Again I repeat, that many 
of these phenomena take place in the presence of only mem- 
bers of the families of these mediums, and many of the me- 
diums are small children, even as young as two years, where 
there is no money consideration. All this presents most 
formidable moral difficulties on the fraud hypothesis. 

That a medium takes pay should not be a sufficient 
ground for her rejection, for a medium must live, as must a 
clergyman. The laborer is worthy of his hire. 
It is easy to rail at mediums, asking : " Can it Mediums 
be that the spirit world is engaged in the sa- ^ ™^ ay no 
cred cause of supplying intermundane commu- of Fraud, 
nications at one dollar a head ? " So we might 
ask. Can it be that heaven is saving souls at this and that 
salary ? 

Yet as Burns sings 

"... Mankind are unco weak 

An' little to be trusted ; 
If self the wavering balance shake, 
It's rarely right adjusted." 



8o FIND THE PEARLS 

Now and then there is an instance of a man living for a 
score of years a gross lie and not showing it in his physiog- 
nomy, but this is rare. On this hypothesis of fraud we must 
believe that thousands in respectable families are now living 
such a life ; that many of these — some simple-minded persons, 
some, even little children — are baffling by their cunning and 
sleight-of-hand trained conjurers and expert scientists! 

The presence of the disgusting humbug that has gathered 
about much of Spiritualism justly excites disgust in the 
hearts of honest people. One in seeking truth there can not 
be blamed if he feels as if he were searching for pearls in a 
cesspool or in a sewer. But if there is a reasonable possibility 
that pearls are there of inestimable value to the world, let 
not the hunt cease; if possible, draw off the filth, but at all 
hazards find the pearls.' 

An expert investigator is not likely to have fraud imposed 
upon him. A good fisherman can usually tell the kind of 
fish at the hook by its bite. An intelligent man, after a few 
scores of visits to the s6ance-room, gets to know the ear- 
marks of fraud. If reasonably wary he is seldom fooled. 

8. That for the production of the phenomena of 
Spiritualism, antecedent faith in the phenomena is es- 
sential. 

Thousands stumble in these investigations when told that 
skepticism and faith are prime factors in preventing and in 
helping the production of Spiritualistic phenomena; and yet 
if Spiritualism be true, it is easy to give the solidest kind of 
scientific and Scriptural reasons for this claim. Christian 
Science throws a side-light on this argument. Look at it : 
Christian Science denies the existence of sickness, pain, the 
body, death, all external nature. What is seemingly more 
irrational than this contention ? And yet faith in it cures 

» Pearls lie within the oyster shell ; the right process will open the shell and 
give you the pearls; so the mind gets at truth, but on finding the truth it be- 
comes so blended and interpenetrated with it that it can not fail to detect the 
counterfeit. "Pastor " — see Preface. 



"ONLY BELIEVE" 8i 

many. Do you say Christian Science often fails and some- 
times causes death ? Yes ; but where it causes one death, it 
saves the lives of scores. Why? Not necessarily because 
it is truth, but because of the potency of faith over external 
nature. 

To make faith a prerequisite is always suspicious, for it 
predisposes the mind to see what it believes it will see. But 
observe that this was a prerequisite in Christ's 
phenomena when on earth. "If you will be- Faith Pre- 

lieve," was His oft-repeated condition. He told ^^JP°^!f„ ^^ 
' ^ _ , See What 

many of those who applied to Him for cures, We Believe. 
It will be done to you according to your faith.^ 
When He could do no miracles in His own country because 
of unbelief, quite likely the derisive cry went up : " Yes, 
when we who know Him are watching, He can not perform 
His tricks; the ' power' is then suddenly * exhausted ' ; ah, 
we have to believe before these things can be done. When a 
magician can get us in that state of mind then his success is 
easy. " 

Church people who are so violent in their skepticism of 
Spiritualistic claims must beware, or by and by they will be 
forced logically to declare the Bible also to be " a patchwork 
of superstitions and of wonder legends " ; a work in which 
"the mystical overwhelms the actual." 

Hudson, in calling attention to the power that skepticism 
has in preventing successful hypnotic and " Spiritualistic " 
experiences, says, in his book against Spiritualism:* 

"The controversy between Washington Irving Bishop and Mr. La- 
bouchere is fresh in the minds of most readers. Mr. Bishop was giving 
successful exhibitions of his wonderful powers in public assemblies and 
in private circles in London. He had demonstrated again and again 
his power to read the thoughts of others and to decipher the contents of 
sealed envelopes under the strictest test conditions, in the presence of 

» Faith is of the essence of the spiritual atmosphere. Without it there can not 
■be love, harmony, and cooperation. It is a vitalizing force, and is therefore essen- 
tial to all successful work. Faith gives strength and vision to every sincere 
seeker after truth ; without it we can not find the truth. "Pastor" — see Preface. 

2 "Law of Psychic Phenomena," pp. 76-79. 



82 POWER OF AUTO-SUGGESTION 

many competent and trustworthy observers. In the height of his success 

Mr. Labouchere came out in his paper and denounced the whole thing 

as a humbug. To prove his sincerity he placed a Bank 

The Porce of England note for a large amount in a sealed envelope, 

of Skepticism and offered to give it to Mr. Bishop if he should correctly 

against read the number. Repeated trials to do so ended in dis- 
PsycMc mal failure. It was a feat that he had successfully per- 
Phenomena. formed a thousand times before and many times after- 
ward. But the number on that particular bank-note he 
never could decipher. . . . 

" Exhibitions of the phenomena of spiritism are constantly liable to 
utter failure in the presence of avowed skeptics. Every one who has at- 
tended a ' spiritual ' seance is aware of the strict regard paid to securing 
'harmonious conditions,' and all know how dismal is the failure when 
such conditions can not be obtained. It frequently happens that some 
one will inadvertently remark that 'spirits never come when I am 
around ' ; and in nine such cases out of ten the sdance will end in failure 
when such a remark is made. Any argument against Spiritism, espe- 
cially if addressed to the medium, or any controversy on the subject in 
his presence, will destroy all chance of a successful exhibition. Inves- 
tigating committees nearly always fail to observe the promised phenom- 
ena when the character and objects of the committee are known to the 
medium. Thus the Seybert Commission, a majority of whose members 
were pronounced skeptics, utterly failed to witness any phenomena which 
might not be produced by legerdemain. In their report they take occa- 
sion to say : 

"'Our experience has been . . . that as soon as an investigation wor- 
thy of the name begins, all manifestations of spiritist power cease. . . . 
Even the very spirit of investigation or of incredulity seems to exercise a 
chilling effect and prevents a successful manifestation.' * 

"It will be observed that the last sentence betrays the fact that the 
writer regards ' the spirit of investigation ' and ' the spirit of incredulity ' 
as synonymous terms. It is certain that the Seybert Commission as a 
body did so regard them, and made no effort to conceal the fact from the 
mediums who submitted to be examined. Every medium whom they 
examined was made fully aware of the incredulity of the majority of the 
commission, and thus every effort to produce tlie phenomena failed. 
The same peculiarity is observed in trance-speaking mediums, especially 
in those who speak in a purely subjective condition. No matter how 
great is their flow of eloquence or how perfect their command of their 
subject, they utterly break down when confronted by an adverse argu- 
ment. So well is this peculiarity known that their friends never suffer 
them to be interrupted. 

" In the case of Bishop, the mind-reader, the same principle applies 
with equal force. The mental state which enabled him to read the con- 

* Seybert Commission, Report, p. 15. 



WONDER-WORKING FAITH 83 

tents of a sealed envelope was self- induced. It was a partially hypnotic 
condition, induced by auto-suggestion. When Labouchere's envelope 
was presented to him, the very manner of presenting it — the offer of its 
contents as a gift if he would read the number of the bank-note within — 
was a defiance of his power. It was a suggestion of the most emphatic 
character and potency that, do what he would, he could not read the con- 
tents of that envelope. Again, the anxiety engendered in the mind of the 
clairvoyant was another factor which added force to the suggestion. The 
offer was not only defiant, it was even public. The whole civilized world 
was apprised of the controversy. The professional reputation of the man 
was at stake. His future career depended upon his success; and every 
dollar of value in that note not only added to his anxiety to win the prize, 
but contributed its force to the suggestion that he could not succeed. . . . 
" It is obvious that the principle of adverse suggestion applies to all 
phases and conditions of subjective mental activity ; and the necessity 
for harmonious conditions, so constantly insisted upon by spiritists as a 
condition precedent to the production of their peculiar forms of hypnotic 
phenomena, is seen to be a scientific fact of immense value and signifi- 
cance, and not a mere subterfuge to enable them to practise a fraud and 
impose on the credulity of their auditors." 

A " spirit control," in reply to a question why skepticism 
interfered with phenomena, replied in substance : 

" A candid, simple skepticism does not necessarily pre- 
vent us, but a determined, aggressive skepticism affects un- 
favorably the power of the medium. Spiritual communion 
depends much upon the attitude of the minds of those pres- 
ent. If one says, * I can not believe these things ; they are 
to me absurd, ' he shuts hard the door against us. Do you 
never ask yourself why Jesus would never per- 
form miracles when His opponents came to Hindering In- 
Him and challenged Him to do miracles, say- g, . . 
ing. If you will do such and such miracles against Jesus, 
here, then we too will believe. He simply 
could not in that atmosphere or while they presented these 
hostile psychic conditions. Faith has power to perform 
wonders even when the motive is wrong. This is a natural 
law in both your world and ours. 

" Why should this be so hard for men to believe } It is 
known among you that coarse physical vibrations will destroy 
even disease germs. Can you not believe that the subtler vi- 



84 HARMONIOUS CONDITIONS 

brations of the ether universe, of the nerve world, are almost 
infinitely more effective ? ^ Non-resistant, passive power of 
mind is efficient if positive faith in the infinite inner world 
be present. Faith is wonderfully potent in setting forces in 
motion. The exercise of it is self-surrender to omniscience 
and omnipotence, and, strange as it may seem, it makes the 
one who exercises it in just that degree omnipotent and 
omniscient. It moves mountains; yes, all things are possi- 
ble to it. It gives cheer, confidence, hope, peace, and these 
are each a greater force in the world than is the thunderbolt, 
the earthquake, the volcano. Terror, doubt, skepticism open 
the door to disease and other evils, giving the conditions 
under which physical and mental microbes thrive and mul- 
tiply. This is both physiologically and psychologically true. 

" There is a vital difference between a spirit of honest 
investigation and a spirit of incredulity. An honest skeptic 
is not one who honestly thinks a thing is not so, but is one 
who is willing honestly to weigh arguments for a truth of 
which he is doubtful. In investigating Spiritualism, it is 
not wise to make the spirit world from whom you seek favors 
feel uncomfortable in your atmosphere by being discourteous 
and antagonistic. Do not smile when we tell you that the 
conditions must be harmonious for communication between 
your world and ours. 

" You blind and foolish men, you recognize at once physi- 
cal forces, but deny analogous mental and spiritual forces. 
And yet, when the spirit leaves your body, what becomes of 
its physical forces .■' Why is this not proof sufficient to you 
that you are creatures of the spirit world even while you are 

' The spiritual vibrations are of a very refined order, connecting the outer 
organization of man with those qualities of the soiil that have to do with what is 
to him the unseen existence, those qualities that feed the springs of an exalted holy 
life. These high vibrations are disturbed when they are brought into contact with 
the coarser ones that surround you. For this reason Jesus, tho possessing extraor- 
dinary power, confined His work to those to whose psychic recognition His nature 
responded. He was anxious to be interrogated, but would not submit to demand 
or force, for He had not come to call into action the harmony necessary for a 
demonstration of the kind of power which this other would have required. 
' Pastor "—see Preface. 



THE HEART SEES 85 

in the body, and that the spirit is the only real force? 

The truth is, but few men believe at all in the spirit world 

except in a perfunctory way — matter is all 

and in all to them. Their fatal mistake is I*erfunctory 

Faith 
that they recognize no intelligence that does jg ^^^ Faith. 

not demonstrate itself to their physical senses. 

If you think a moment you will see how absurd this is. A 

poet can not make himself known through the physical senses 

of the hearer; nor can a wit. Let them make trial with a 

savage. That savage's physical senses are better than those 

of civilized people." 

There is plenty of room to question the thought in much 
of the above " talk," but no room at all to question the exalta- 
tion of spirit in the last paragraph. For indeed what are 
the beauties of the Yosemite to an eye, however perfect the 
eye may be, if there is not an esthetic soul behind the eye .-' 
What are the sublime harmonies of a Wagner to an ear, 
however acute, if there is not an inner ear that is developed 
to know these harmonies .-' And in truth why should it be 
hard to believe that these inner senses have capacities that 
have a scale with octaves above and below the outer senses, 
and will live when the outer senses cease .-' But all this we 
'can believe without believing in spirit communication. The 
control continues : 

"This question of Spiritualism is much more than a 
question of evidence; it is a growth. Live, grow a devel- 
oped soul, and, tho you never hear a rap or 

witness a single spiritual phenomenon, to be- Faith 

,. . . .^. ^. • ,. .,, , is Growth of 

lieve m spiritistic communication will be easy ,, ^ 

^ ■' the Inner 

to you. Your own Bible tells you that to him Natiire. 
that overcometh — that is, succeeds in growing 
the spirit nature — will be given a white stone on which 
will be a writing that none but that one can know. Truth, 
like the rainbow, is not exactly the same to any two per- 
sons. 

" Wonder-seeking is materialism ; curiosity is selfishness. 



86 COMMUNICATION DIFFICULT 

The power to grow a spiritual nature which is true individual- 
ity is the chief object of every true religion." 

All this philosophy, whatever its source, is reasonable 
enough, and to me very interesting, but it carries very little 
weight on these the real points at issue between Spiritualists 
and non- Spiritualists : Do these intelligences who are mani- 
festing in the seance-room dwell outside earthly bodies ; and 
if so, are they discarnate men ; and if this is settled in the 
affirmative, are they the discarnate men they claim themselves 
to be? A thousand talks like the above, taken by them- 
selves, should not be able to convert a single rational skep- 
tic to Spiritualism. As corroborating proofs they have, of 
course, importance. 

There is no question whatever in my mind that to open 
visible and audible communication between this and the 
spirit world would prove a surpassingly difficult and complex 
undertaking. One consideration alone settles that point with 
me, this one — it of course has no weight with those who do 
not accept the New Testament : Jesus did not realize fully 
His nature and mission until a late date in life. This reve- 
lation grew upon Him; yet He came from the Father of His 
own free will to do just what He did do. If this all be true, 
and I believe it is, it follows that the entrance of even so 
exalted a nature into the flesh realm was accompanied by an 
obscuration of His consciousness, and His inner self grew 
into recognition only after years. 

I put this question to a control, and he replied : " Now 
listen : Something more than tellmg is necessary to give 
real belief in these higher truths. The faculties of the soul 
that give this recognition must develop up to them by re- 
peated decisions of the will and by exercise. They can not 
be extemporized any more than a mother's love, or the facul- 
ties that recognize art can lDe extemporized by a monster. 
Altho Jesus had done many miracles among them and spake 
as never man spake, they did not believe on Him. There is 
no royal road into the inner kingdom. Ye must be born 



"LEADS TO INSANITY" 87 

again — born into it, and then grow its spiritual senses and 
other faculties by the exercise of volition." 

9. That it unfits the believer in it for the affairs of 
daily life — often leading to insanity. 

This story is told of Senator Pettigrew, of South Carolina : 
At the outbreak of the Rebellion, replying to a stranger who 
inquired the way to the insane asylum, he said, " Go any- 
where, sir; you can not go wrong." This is about the public 
estimate of Spiritualism. The average physician diagnoses 
it as follows : An unbridled imagination, disordered nerves, 
and jaundiced liver; and he prescribes quiet sleep, vigorous 
massage around the solar plexus, with a few doses of blue 
mass and protoxid of iron. 

We must be reasonable in our arguments against Spiri- 
tualism, or we shall help it, not hurt it. Injustice is a gun 
that does a surprisingly large amount of its execution at the 
breech. It gives the soil in which new movements grow 
rapidly. Already many people are saying. Have these bitter 
attacks any more justification than had similar assaults in the 

past whenever a new truth was advocated on ,„ 

^ ... Many of the 

earth .-* Jesus had a devil ; much learnmg had World's 

made Paul mad ; Luther and Wesley were Greatest Men 

beside themselves. Many of those who have Thought 

opened doors upward have been the victims of 

shameful persecutions, even to torture and death. The other 

day a newspaper feathered its arrow thus : " The faith of a 

Spiritualist is that of a man who believes a lie to be true 

when he knows it to be a lie. " 

It takes a long while to have it ground into our brains 
that the emphasis of disbelief, denunciation, ridicule may but 
measure the profundity of our ignorance ; and that there is 
a skepticism from ignorance as well as a skepticism from 
knowledge. 

Extensive statistics have been published that seem clearly 
to prove that the percentage of Spiritualists in insane asy- 



88 SOCRATES' THOUGHT 

lums is not beyond that of other religious classes — curiously, 
the statistics make this percentage to be less. 

It is seriously asserted that those who become interested 
in Spiritualism lose their grip somewhat on this world. Is 
there any immediate danger that the human race will have 
its stock of unworldliness increased out of due proportion } 
Can not the world stand somewhat more spirituality without 
harm .-* Really, if Spiritualism can help us to average up on 
the right side, we shall have received a distinct gain. We 
are sententiously told, "One world at a time." We might 
have said that to Christ and Paul — they both had their eyes 
fixed on a world out of sight. 

Old Socrates did not hesitate to teach that " the study of 
death is the philosophy of life." When will we learn that 
the way to conquer this world is by being willing to let it go? 
He who seeks this life loses it. The other world is the 
fulcrum whereby we can lift this. 

10. That the information given through mediums is 
often inaccurate. 

The information which we thus receive, whether it comes 
from the subjective mind of the medium or from spirits, is at 
times unreliable and the intelligence speaking is often most 
capricious ; but again, we must not press our conclusions too 
far or too fast. Ah, poor Peter ! who can believe you — you 
lied and backed up your lie with an oath, and now you ask 
us to believe that you were set free from a prison by an 
angel ! No, Peter; "false in one, false in all." That is the 

travesty of reasoning. There are nine hundred 

Poor and ninety-nine poisonous foods, therefore 

. ■ there is no. genuine food and we should refuse 

False in All." to eat. It is good reasoning if, instead, we 

say, Therefore we should be exceedingly cir- 
cumspect with the food we do eat and have it most carefully 
analyzed. It would be an act of supreme folly to say, 
Therefore we will refuse to accept any food and starve. 



SPIRITS INACCURATE 89 

I brought these matters of contradictions and inaccuracies 
before a spirit-control. In doing so I made mention of a 
particular case that showed illiteracy as well as bad memory. 
The control replied as follows : 

" I know nothing of the circumstances of this particular 
case of which you make mention, but, granting that the 
medium was genuine and that the true spirit of the wife was 
communicating, the probabilities are that this woman, having 
but lately passed into the spirit world, could not communi- 
cate directly but had to use intermediaries. She probably 
expressed what she desired to say to one on her plane, and 
he to another nearer to the earth, and this one to a third 
who acted as the amanuensis, having power to speak through 
some earthly medium. Now this amanuensis may have been 
an ignorant person and the medium on your side may have 
been ignorant. Then, in addition to all this, often when a 
spirit comes into earth conditions he is himself partly hypno- 
tized, so that he does not see things straight, makes mistakes, 
is confused, and becomes half-controlled or wholly controlled 
by environments. 

" Sometimes circles fail, as the recent circle of Mrs. 

of which you spoke to me a while ago, because of the 

disturbance of the nerve- centers of the medium.;- There are 
times when, if you should examine the blood of 
a medium with a microscope, you would find Spirit 

that the corpuscles are much disturbed, so that ^^ ^^ ^°^^ 
the blood is something like curdled milk. Such accuracies. 
successful experiments as those you referred to 
by Sir William Crookes with Miss Cook could not have been 
made had there not been a perfect harmony secured through 
confidence. The great wonderful working power is confi- 
dence. Confidence sets natures in harmony and brings out 
the best that is in each. As Jesus said, where two or 
three agree touching any one thing it would take place, 
and again and again He repeated : If ye only believe — have 
confidence — all things would become possible. Sugges- 



go PERSONAL EQUATION 

tion has great power with a medium. Learn what that 
means." 

Another " control " to whom I put a similar question re- 
plied : " Sometimes the outside intelligence lays hold of the 
organs of the body and controls them without the conscious- 
ness or the mind of the medium being in any way affected. 
At other times the impression is made on the mind direct 
and there is a conscious doing of the thing; that is, the will 
of the recipient is affected or controlled. But in either case 
the message is greatly affected by the organism of the me- 
dium, as is light by the color of the glass through which it 
passes. The personal equation should never be ignored in 
the interpretation of messages. We are endeavoring here on 
our side to overcome this ; you must do what you can to give 
us mediums who will not distort or deflect our messages. " 

Putting this same question to still another control in 
another city, the answer was: "Some spirits in trying to 
communicate are so confused that they even forget where 
they were born, the names of their parents, etc. ; in the 
effort to come to their friends, they enter the environments 
of the physical plane and strive to use the physical organism 
of the medium. The physical organism is far more complex 
than your greatest physiologists even dream of. For one 
intelligence to use the organism of another is not an easy 
task, A spirit attempting to communicate with those on 
your side has to pass through a condition that is somewhat 
akin to the trance state. We use at times mediums on our 
side. One in this circle put it well the other evening. He 
said: *As with wireless telegraphy imperfect receivers often 
make nonsense of intelligent messages, so in spirit communi- 
cation. If a piano be much out of tune, the discords must 
not be attributed to a Mozart or a Wagner who may be play- 
ing upon it.' Why must we repeat this simple truth again 
and again to have the human understanding grasp it } 

" If you are opening a new mode of communication or at- 
tempting to utilize a new force and new faculties, you must 



"GHOST OF A CHANCE" 91 

expect aberrations. Remember, some of these new faculties 
which you are attempting to use are as immature as are the 
reasoning powers of a nine days' old babe." 

I give these "talks," not because the reasoning is con- 
clusive, but to give the reader an idea of the philosophy, the 
mode of reasoning, and the intellectual caliber of many of 
the " spirit intelligences " to be met with in seance-rooms. 

II. That these facts, being contradictory to general 
belief and experience, require unusual testimony, and 
that this testimony is not forthcoming. 

One editor writes : " If Dr. Funk finds that he can pos- 
sibly account for the finding of the coin in any other way 
than by spirit hypothesis, he should reject this hypothesis." 
This rule I have adopted, but is it not an unusual condition 
in the acceptance of evidence, a rule that is not applied in 
courts, and is it wholly fair in the testing of psychic phe- 
nomena.? If A. misses his watch and it is found in the 
pocket of B., the presumption is that B. stole it. No; I must 
hold it impossible for B. to have stolen that watch if there 
is any other conceivable way for the watch to have got into 
his pocket. The law of probabilities is excluded. The 
" Beecher spirit " is held guilty of lying if there is any other 
possible way that can be thought of by which that ancient 
coin could have been located, no matter how great the im- 
probabilites against the theory. Suppose the probabilities 
against the other theory are ninety-nine and the probability 
against the spirit theory is one, we must reject the spirit 
theory. This is rather hard on the ghost of Mr. Beecher. 
Judge Abram H. Dai ley says : "We don't give the ghost 
the benefit of reasonable doubt." We don't give it a ghost 
of a chance. 

The Apostle John, speaking of blood and water coming 
out of Jesus's side, said : " And he that saw, bare record, and 
his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true." 
Only one witness, but he had confidence in his eyes against 



92 BUTT FOR JESTS 

the common occurrences of life, and the Christian world 
accepts his single testimony. 

Yet, on the other hand, Spiritualists must not forget that 
they are asking credence for a series of facts v^hich upset the 
notions of causation that have been held by a majority of 
intelligent people in all civilized lands ; and they must be 
very, very patient. The extreme sensitiveness of mediums 
and other Spiritualists to criticism and investigation is the 
chiefest difficulty I have had to contend against in my in- 
vestigations. 

12. That belief in psychic phenomena exposes its 
advocates to ridicule. 

Immanuel Kant admits that fear of ridicule from his fel- 
low philosophers kept him from frankly telling what he 
thought of the transcendental marvels that appeared through 
Swedenborg. Dr. Savage says that an English scientist who 
is a Spiritualist told him that he did not speak of his belief 
except to particular friends, "for," he said, "you know a 
man does not like to be thought a fool." 

It is quite easy to make an investigator feel uncomfort- 
able, especially if he is somewhat sensitive, by greeting him 
in company with : " Well, have you seen any 

Guying more spirits .'* " Quite likely it was a common 
Columbus and . , , , r r^ ^ ■, ^^ ^i i 

Stephenson. J^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^® ^-^ Columbus : Old 
man, have you found any new worlds .-' " And 
Stephenson probably had the laugh turned on him more than 
once while experimenting with his iron horse with such 
chaffing as : " Let us have two iron trotting horses to-day 
for an hour and to-morrow two galloping ones." Every man 
who attempts something beyond his age becomes a butt for 
jests. 

Spiritualism is a rich vein for the funny man in the 
average newspaper office to work, but somehow the less 
we know of these phenomena the easier it is to laugh at 
them. 



"A VERY BAD SPELL" 93 

A preacher preaching the sermon at the funeral of a 

Spiritualist did not please the widow. She grew quite uneasy 

and finally arose and said, " My husband's 

spirit has taken possession of me " ; and pro- "^ Corpse 

. . " Sassmg'" 

ceeded to speak most strongly against things Back. 

which the preacher had said, and expounded a 
theology not laid down in any text-book. The old preacher, 
after she had finished, quietly said : " Brethren, for thirty- 
and five years I have buried your dead and have held all man- 
ner of funeral services, but never before have I preached a 
funeral sermon and had the corpse to sass back." Of course 
we all laugh at this as a capital joke against Spiritualists, a 
kind of argument that is hard to answer. 

The Atlanta Constitution said, at the time of the talk 
about the finding of the "Widow's Mite" : "Dr. Funk may 
be good at making a dictionary, but when he thought he talked 
with the spirit of Beecher he was having a very bad spell." 
Another paper said : " Dr. Funk has been so faithful against 
spirits alcoholic, it is a thousand pities that he should have 
fallen at last a victim to the spirits satanic." 

A newspaper friend sent me the following good-natured 
letter : 

" My dear Doctor : An old lady subscriber writes : ' I have been 

a subscriber for the these many years. I like your paper in every 

way, except that you do not publish any more the weekly sermons of the 
Rev. Dr. Talmage. If you do not intend to continue the publication of 
these sermons weekly as preached by Dr, Talmage, you may stop my 
subscription.' Now, my dear doctor, you must come to my relief and 
just tell Dr. Talmage to please to send to me a copy of each of the 
weekly sermons that he preaches to his spirit audiences ' just over the 
border.' " 

Of course we all know that there is no argument in all 
this, but they are more effective with the multitude than 
any amount of argument. One Monday morning, some years 
before his death, I met Dr. Deems on Broadway, who, with a 
half-comical expression, said : 

" Doctor, do I look like a fool ? " 



94 STUBBORN FACTS 

"No; why?" 

" Did you read what The Herald reported this morning 
that I said yesterday? " 

"No." 

" Oh," said he, " I wish that no one else would read it, 
I can't correct it. If I do, the reporter will swear I said it 
or something worse, and this will give it wings and make all 
laugh at me." 

He had had experience in correcting newspaper reports — 
experience like unto that of the captain who, upon his return 
from the Cuban war to his country home with his company, 
was indignant at finding in the local paper in great letters : 
"The battle-scared veterans have returned." Upon his 
protest, the next day the paper contained an apology and 
said : " We meant to say ' the bottle-scarred veterans had 
returned.'" Being myself somewhat of a newspaper man, I 
have learned that the best way to correct reports in news- 
papers is to go ahead with your work and they correct them- 
selves. Hence I let the reporters last year say just about 
what they pleased about that " Widow's Mite " incident. 

There is great force in droll analogies, pat anecdotes, 
exaggerated comparisons, in irony if not too severe. 

I can not but call that man superior who sees things as 
I see them. And so it turns out that testimony amounts to 
little ; for if favorable to the fact and against our precon- 
ceived opinion of it, that stamps it proof positive of the lack 
of judgment in the observer. When one of recognized level- 
headedness says that he has found reason to believe that 
spirits do communicate, he must not be surprised to hear 
rung the death-knell of his reputation for common sense. 

But facts have a way of getting their revenge. " Take 
truth," says Carlyle, "and surround it with bitter denials 
and contradictions, and the soil is furnished for its perma- 
nent growth." A fact is not changed one iota whether we 
indorse it or rail at it. If we hoot at it and turn our back 
upon it, and then again turn toward it, we shall find it look- 



THE ZEITGEIST 95 

ing us squarely in the eye. Why rail at a Spiritualistic 

phenomenon ? That will not change the result, whether it 

be true or false ; the result is wrapped up in 

the inviolability of fact. Abuse should cease. -^ Fact, 

Call no man a crank who is seeking to lift 9-^^^,°" \ ®' 

° will not 

the world. Conscience has in it saving salt, Down, 

even tho it be in error. From the army of 
cranks to-day will come the great men of to-morrow, and our 
grandchildren will celebrate their centennial birthdays at the 
Waldorf- Astorias of that day. 

" Speak, Histoty ! Who are life's victors? Unroll tliy long annals and 

say. 
Are they those whom the world called the victors who won the success 

of a day ? 
The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans who fell at Thermopylae's tryst, 
Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges, or Socrates? Pilate, or 

Christ?"! 

We are not in a judicial frame of mind when we adjudge 
every man a butt for wit the moment he declares that certain 
phenomena point to spirit causes, and these witticisms lose 
much of their side-splitting qualities, since among those who 
thus declare are men like Sir Oliver Lodge, Prof. James 
Hyslop, late of Columbia, Sir William Crookes, Prof. William 
James of Harvard, Alfred Russel Wallace, etc. 

13. That the information given by psychic intelli- 
gence is not beyond the age in which it is given — the 
Zeitgeist ; frequently it is not beyond the intelligence of 
the circle. 

Had from the cabinet come the Darwinian theory of 
evolution, the plan for freeing the negro, the plan for inter- 
national arbitration, the phonograph, the tele- 
phone, then the skeptic would have had a much „ ^^® ®f 
'^ ^ Commonplace. 

harder nut to crack. Andrew Jackson Davis 
did anticipate the discovery of Uranus. But why in the his- 
tory of Spiritualism should there be so few incidents after 
this sort .-• 

» W. W. story, " Hymn of the Conquered." 



g6 LINGUISTIC CURIOSITY 

The commonplace of the seance-room is one of the most 
repellent objections to it. 

Such trivialities as the following shock and repel, and if 
telepathy be true, can be easily accounted for, it is the spirit 
of the circle : 

Member of Circle : " Is that you, George ? " 

G. : " Yes ; how are you ? " 

M. : " Why weren't you at our home on Thanksgiving 
Day?" 

G. : "I was there. Why didn't you give me some of 
that plum-pudding? Ha, ha! " 

George was presumed to be a spirit. When I asked him 
whether he cared for plum-pudding, he replied : " No ; I speak 
in this way so as to make you all feel that I am one like 
yourselves." 

A spirit from Mars was announced, and, in answer to a 
question, gave the following curious information : 

"My body is in Mars. I have not passed out [died]. 
We no kill things there ; no eat flesh. We study philosophy 
of life, growth. You could do as we do, go out of your 
body, if you have confidence." 

"What about the canals in Mars? " 

" Oh, great water, so blue, so blue ! " 

" What is the language? " 

" I can't talk language of Mars here. I am in earth con- 
ditions. " 

" What is the name of water? " 

"Aqua." 

Evidently the Martians and the Romans were linguisti- 
cally related.^ 

While much of the communication given from the cabi- 
net is of a character that reflects closely the beliefs of the 
medium or of members of the circle — of the earth, earthy — 

1 An intelligent friend of mine who sat closer to the cabinet than did I, under- 
stood the word that was given for water to be agora^ which he assured me is a 
native African word for water ; either term verified as the word used in Mars 
would surely furnish a very interesting linguistic study. 



LIKE DRAWS LIKE 97 

there are utterances that are weighty, examples of which I 

give on other pages. 

The information given by the Bible writers shows also 

marks of strange limitations. The sun stood still, not the 

earth; the earth is spoken of as having /^z/r _ 

1 , 1, • • 1 1 Did the 

corners, and other talk is given that does not Zeitgeist also 

harmonize with our present knowledge. Was Affect 

this the Zeitgeist of that day } Why did not *^® ^i^^® 

Paul help the ship captain in his emergency 

by the invention of the mariner's compass.'' This would 

have been an easy thing for the inspiring powers, and what 

proof it would have given of Paul's inspiration ! 

In putting this question to a spirit control I got this 
answer : 

" Remember two things : No more certain is the law that 
water finds its level than is the law that a spirit finds his 
level. The vast majority of the communications that come 
through the spirit circles are from ignorant spirits, often 
mischievous, at times very earthly. The more earthly they 
are, the easier it is for them to enter your earth conditions 
and communicate — absorbing knowledge from the mind of 
the medium and from the minds of the members of the circle. 

" A man may pass out of your world with savage, hateful, 
rebellious passions in his blood, and be not wholly a bad 
man. These may belong largely to the body and die with 
the body; but if a man is selfish, is a liar, is proud, and is 
full of hate and contempt, that man has a bad character; 
that is, he has small soul development, he is bound to be a 
dwarf, a deformed one as he enters into this life and will 
here appear as he is. On earth you know each other in 
part ; here each sees the other as he is. It is this class of 
spirits that crowd the average seance-room. They go to 
their level, and hence the familiarity and commonplace shown 
in the communications — like draws like. 

" The other thing to remember is that the spirit doors are 
all the time wide open between the higher minds here and 
7 



98 LAW OF COMMUNICATION 

the higher minds on earth. Back of your consciousness, 
your spirit natures — that is, your true selves — are in con- 
stant communication with the spirit world. 
Spirits stldom ^^ rapidly as your world is ready to receive, 

Speak we give through those who are ready to re- 
Through ceive. As yet, the really great spirits but sel- 
V^^T^H °° ^'^^ speak through your mediums. They com- 
municate direct, that is, by mental voices and 
impressions. The spirit world keeps no secrets from you. 
Knowledge is free as the air you breathe ; but as air can be 
breathed only by lungs that have developed up to it, so the 
entrance of knowledge into a mind is determined by the ca- 
pacity of that mind to receive it. The ability to receive de- 
termines the limitations ; not our will nor yours — your will 
only so far as it determines the growth of your capacity to 
receive. True, we know myriads of things not known to 
you, and about which you will know when you have capacity 
to receive and assimilate them. 

" With spirits information is not imparted mechanically. 
It enters wherever there is capacity to receive, as does the 
wireless message. Every soul gets all knowledge to which 
it is attuned. 

" Neither the impartation nor the acceptance of knowl- 
edge is arbitrary. Ears they have, but hear not, the outward 
but not the inward capacity. As has been truly said, 'Life 
has power to reveal itself only to life, and to each life only 
after its kind. ' " 

What this control says about the Zeitgeist may possibly 
explain the following incident : A " spirit " gave an exposi- 
tion on immortality which was not original, but a quotation 
from a book. When asked to explain, the answer was : " In 
the memory before death, in the memory after death. " Hud- 
son, in his writings against Spiritualism, tells us the subjec- 
tive mind never forgets. Our knowledge is too limited for 
us safely either to affirm or deny the truth of this, yet it 
seems to fit in with the eternal fitness of things that there 



JUDGED BY ITS BEST 99 

is nothing in death that necessarily should cause forget- 
fulness. 

There are millions of skeptics to-day on earth who would 
rejoice to accept Spiritualism if its communications from the 
spirit world revealed a quality of mind and 
goodness worthy of that world. It is often the Inferior 
lack of this quality that makes them recoil. essages a 
Much, much of its so-called revelation is pre- Drawback, 
tentious nonsense. I protested at a s6ance 
that some spirits babbled like fools. The answer was : 
" Quite likely we have many fools over here — light minds 
whose thoughts flit about like newly hatched spawn in a 
summer lake. If you continue to send us fools, how can we 
help ourselves ? " 

Another control said : 

" There is something in Spiritualism far better than any- 
thing you have received from it, as there was something far 
better than ' tick, tick ' in Morse's first successful experiments 
with the telegraph. 

" But do not overlook seemingly little, but in fact very 
important, things that have resulted, as : 

" I . The simple fact of communication. You can not 
repeat too often this thought expressed by one here : If but 
a single message has crossed this ' gulf of silence,' and this 
can be scientifically proved, this fact alone is of unspeakable 
value. You said last week that to set in operation the 
machinery of the spirit world to find a little coin is like the 
Czar of all the Russias mobilizing his army to kill a mouse. 
Do not blunder in thinking that our object was to find that 
coin. Mr. Beecher told you that he cared nothing for the 
coin, but the object was to give you and others a clear dem- 
onstration that the spirit world can and does communicate. 
Was not that object worthy of the attention of spirits.-' 

" 2. The spirit world is mixed in quality — good, bad, in- 
diflferent ; and, hear my insistence, the output is to be judged 
by its best, not by its lowest or its average, but by its best. 



loo KEEP THE DOOR OPEN UPWARD 

The spirits with which you come mostly in contact are but 
the stage carpenters of the stupendously important drama 
that is being enacted. Look up and see the true actors — 
them you must learn to recognize not by sense organs. 

" Sometimes trivial things are often the best proof — no 
feeling is awakened, as of affection, and can you not see that 
sometimes for this reason trivial things should be selected by 
the spirit world.'' 

" 3. We are seeking to place under your civilization a 
religion that has a solid basis in facts that can be verified by 
your scientists. When you harness your civilization to the 
spirit world your progress will be greatly augmented. 

" Let us pray : 

" Father God, we give Thee gratitude for knowledge that 
life is continuous, and that this knowledge is being revealed 
to earth as it is to us in the spirit world. We thank Thee 
that there is no death and that the communion of spirits is a 
reality between the spirits who inhabit the spirit world and 
those who inhabit the earth world. Amen. 

" Friends, keep the door open upward. Bring into action 
your noblest thoughts, and these will be so many voices call- 
ing down nobler spirits, and their communication will be 
food on which your souls will grow. " 

There is much talk of this quality in the seance-room. 
Whence come these utterances.-' Are they "blasts from 
heaven, or from hell," ^ or from the conscious or unconscious 
mind of the medium? Who can tell me.-* 

1 " The devil does not intentionally defeat his own kingdom. Why then think 
such communications proceed from a fiend or fraud ? " " Pastor "—see Preface. 



Ill 

A LETTER FROM SCIENTISTS— A STUDY 

I have culled the following from letters by several well- 
known scientists, who have written to me their reasons why 
they do not make a thorough investigation of the psychic 
problem; I have woven these extracts into a single letter: 

" Among the reasons why scientists object to investigating Spiritualis- 
tic phenomena are the darkness of the stance-room, the joining of hands, 
the sitting arrangements in the circle, and other rules imposed in ' talking 
to the spirits,' all of which make anything worthy of the name investiga- 
ting exceedingly difficult and unsatisfactory. Then the medium is usually' 
a woman, and the meetings are generally held at the houses of the me- 
diums officiating or at the houses of friends and believers, and belief in 
the ' spirits ' is a matter of religion with nearly all in the circles ; hence 
to question the honesty of the medium conflicts with courtesy to ' mine 
host' and with the rules of good breeding. And, further, scientists can 
not accept any psychic facts until they become positive, mathematical, 
scientific. The proof is not positive, hence not scientifiG." 

In addition to the hindrances indicated in the above let- 
ter, there are others encountered at seances that are apt to 
predispose scientists against an investigation of these phe- 
nomena. William James, Professor of Psy- 
chology at Harvard University, giving a de- Professor 

scription of his first experiences with Mrs. 

"^ _ ^ _ vard, and 

Piper, the trance medium, now of the Society j/£rs. Piper, 
for Psychical Research, says ^ the " spirit con- 
trol Phinuit " gave the names "of many of my relatives and 
friends," but those names were given with difficulty and 
were only gradually made perfect. The professor's wife's 
father's name of Gibbens was announced first as Biblin, then 
as Giblin. His child Herman, who had died the previous 
year, had his name spelt as Herrin, 

» Proceedings of S. P. R., vol. 6, pp. 651-9. 
lOI 



I02 TRIVIAL THINGS CONVINCING 

" I think," says the professor, " that in no case were both the Christian 
and surnames given on this [first] visit. But the facts predicated of the 
persons named made it in many instances impossible not to recognize the 
particular individuals who were talked about. We took particular pains 
on this occasion to give the Phinuit control no help over his difficulties 
and to ask no leading questions. In the light of subsequent experience, 
I believe this not to be the best policy. . . . 

" The most convincing things said about my own immediate house- 
hold were either very intimate or very trivial. Unfortunately the former 
things can not well be published. Of the trivial things, I have forgotten 
the greater number, but the following, rarce nantes, may serve as sam- 
ples of their class : She said that we had lost recently a rug and I a 
waistcoat. (She wrongly accused a person of stealing the rug, which was 
afterward found in the house.) She told of my killing a gray-and-white 
cat with ether, and described how it had ' spun round and round ' before 
dying. She told how my New York aunt had written a letter to my wife 
warning her against all mediums, and then went off on a most amusing 
criticism, full of traits vifs, of the excellent woman's character. (Of 
course, no one but my wife and I knew the existence of the letter in ques- 
tion.) She was strong on the events in our nursery, and gave strikhig 
advice during our first visit to her aDout the way to deal witli certain 
• tantrums ' of our second child, ' little Billy-boy,' as she called him, 
reproducing his nursery name. She told how the crib creaked at night, 
how a certain rocking-chair creaked mysteriously, how my wife had heard 
footsteps on the stairs, etc. Insignificant as these things sound when 
read, the accumulation of a large number of them has an irresistible 
effect. And I repeat again what I said before that, taking everything 

that I know of Mrs. P into account, the result is to make me feel as 

absolutely certain as I am of any personal fact in the world that she 
knows things in her trances which she can not possibly have heard in her 
waking state and that the definitive philosophy of her trances is yet to be 
found. The limitations of her trance information, its discontinuity and 
fitfulness, and its apparent inability to develop beyond a certain point, 
altho they end by rousing one's moral and human impatience with the 
phenomenon, are yet, from a scientific point of view, among its most 
interesting peculiarities, since where there are limits there are conditions, 
and the discovery of these is always the beginning of explanation." 

In making my investigations I ran against difficulties at 
almost every turn. On one occasion, in response to urgent 
requests that I be permitted to apply severe critical tests to 
a certain medium, the control said : " In making tests with 
the medium outside of her house, you must not forget that 
our medium is an exceedingly nervous woman. We must 
use her as she is. If she has a seance outside of her own 



SPIRIT FORGETS NAME 103 

home and her familiar surroundings, there is much strain 
placed upon her. If you make tests, putting her in an iron 
cage, or placing netting over the cabinet door, or tacking 
down a netting over and around her, or sewing her in a bag, 
you treat her as a culprit. This inevitably affects her nerves 
and the vibratory condition of the nerve ether within and 
about her. We must protect her, or we shall destroy the 
powers that make her a medium. You must give attention 
to the laws that govern the production of these phenomena or 
we can do nothing. The forces at best are difficult to mas- 
ter, extremely subtle, and are understood only by those who 
truly know psychology on your side and the chemistry of 
the spiritual world on our side. " 

Again and again in one's investigation the door is thus 
shut in his face. 

On another occasion I was told that the spirit of a cousin 
of mine was present. I asked : " If this is my cousin, would 
he not kindly give his full name .■• " The " con- 
trol " answered, after a moment's delay and „ ?^7 

■' Sensitive 

some audible remonstrance with the spirit be- Spirit. 

hind the curtain : " You asked for the name 
too suddenly. This has disconcerted the spirit in his strained 
condition, and in spite of my urgency makes it impossible 
for him to give you what you ask. This again illustrates 
the supreme difficulties spirits meet in communicating with 
earth. I tell you that it is no easy task." 

The discouragements an investigator encounters are en- 
hanced at times by the fact that the spirits do not agree with 
one another. At a stance, shortly after the above occurred, 
a spirit told me that she had forgotten her mother's name. 
When pressed to tell how this could be true, she said she 
could not understand the reason, but that her guardian spirits 
caused her to forget. When asked to explain in what way it 
is that guardian spirits so control, she said that they were 
" over all souls ; that each guardian is like unto the soul he 
guards, only higher; sometimes bigoted, sometimes supersti- 



I04 WHY STANCE FAILED 

tious, sometimes ignorant, never infallible. Like here also 
draws like, so that every soul is in a degree the chooser of his 
guardian and may influence and even change one guardian for 
another by the law that like draws like. Guardian spirits do 
not absolutely control, for every soul is sovereign. Not any- 
thing can interfere with that sovereignty ; individuality must 
be respected. A man may advance beyond his guardian and 
become in reality the guardian spirit of the one who had been 
his guardian. The law of fitness determines this. Now my 
guardian, whom I strive always to obey, does not wish me to 
give this name and he made me forget it. He does not give 
me his reason. That is all I can tell you." 

Were a medium dishonest, this is an easy way to prevent 
discovery; if honest, such conditions are extremely unfortu- 
nate and annoying from the viewpoint of an investigator. 

At Mrs. 's circle one evening when I was present, 

there was a gathering in the parlors of more than forty per- 
sons. It seemed to be a good time to advertise 
Odd Reason the meetings that were to follow, as each per- 
„ son paid ^i to be present, and yet it was given 

Seance. out at the beginning, even before the seance, 
that the sitting would be a comparative failure 
and those who desired to leave were offered back their money. 
When asked why "a failure," the answer was "because 
there are so many inexperienced persons present it will make 
it difficult to harmonize the vibrations." If the phenomena 
were under the control of the medium, a crowded audience or 
bad weather would scarcely make any difference. It certainly 
would seem bad policy for a theater or a circus manager to 
make his exhibition a failure because of the fulness of the 
house or of the condition of the atmosphere outside. I have 
heard many a circle announced a failure by a control because 
" of the stormy atmospheric conditions." 

We are persistently told at circles that "mutual con- 
fidence is essential — confidence of the medium in the sitters, 
and confidence of the sitters in the medium. There must be 



GROUNDING THE WIRE 105 

a receptive condition in the circle. The requisites are seren- 
ity of mind, confidence in the integrity of each other, and 
calm desire." Again, these are unfortunate conditions, as 
they predispose one to accept whatever comes. 

The following is typical : In a circle in New York two 
men, well dressed and intelligent, were quietly requested by 
the medium to leave the room, as she was im- 
pressed that their presence hindered the "vi- Turned Out 
bratory wave conditions." In explanation of glance Room 
this it was said by a " control " : " How often 
have you observed that a telegraphic wire would not work, 
and on examination it v/as found that another wire had crossed 
and grounded it, and the electric force was absorbed. Some 
men absorb somehow the psychic force that is necessary to 
make phenomena. They ground the wire. They may not 
be violent skeptics, may be really sincere persons and even 
believers in the phenomena, and yet their presence hinders 
us." 

As elsewhere mentioned. Dr. Hudson, in his able attempt 
to explain psychic phenomena otherwise than by Spiritual- 
ism, shows the necessity of faith, confidence, harmony, as 
helpful agencies in what he calls mental therapeutics.' Dr. 
Hudson illustrates this by the so-called miracle workings of 
Christ. Note how, at the raising of Jairus's daughter. He 
urged the father to dismiss fear and have faith. He excluded 
the doubters from the room, sought to give them confidence 
by telling them that the maid was not dead — in every way 
He strove to make the environment that of belief and har- 
mony. If skepticism hindered the workings of the psychic 
powers of Jesus, there should not be an a priori reason against 
the contention of these controls — at least there should not be 
among Christians. 

A control said to me : " There are emanations that come 
from some persons which strike the medium like shots from 
a gun, and even I, experienced as I am, find it difficult to keep 

' "The Law of Psychic Phenomena," pp. 361-4. 



io6 FAITH OMNIPOTENT 

my balance in earth conditions while these adverse waves 

strike me. Why should this seem strange to you ? Your 

psychologists no longer laugh when one speaks 

Thought- of a finite mind vibrating in harmony with the 

ayes an universal mind. Thought- waves should not 
Wireless . ° . . 

Telegraphy, be strange in an age when it is known that 

waves of the electric ocean go around the 
world in a second or two, and that there are waves of sub- 
stances like radium that travel hundreds of thousands of miles 
in a second and have amazing potency. Foolish mortals, 
when will you learn that the potency of the coarse and clumsy 
forces of the physical world are as nothing compared with 
that of psychic forces .'' Your prophet did not exaggerate 
the slightest when He said, If you had but the beginnings of 
real faith you could lift mountains and hurl them into the 
ocean. 

" It is to adapt ourselves to your low earth conditions that 
we use mediums, for it is only in this way that we can reach 
your coarse, physical senses. We are compelled to use the 
organisms of mediums. This hinders, embarrasses, confuses 
us, often causes us to blunder, by having our utterances 
mixed and confused with those of the medium's psychic 
nature and with the nerve and thought vibrations of the mem- 
bers of your circle. Again and again you wish us to satisfy 
unreasonable skepticism by working wonders, and you can 
not understand what we mean when we say that we can not. 
Why do you not see that skepticism is an impassable bar } 
Never forget that Christ, altho having extraordinary power, 
could not exercise that power when demanded of Him by the 
skeptics of the age; He never did anything for display or to 
satisfy curiosity. He really could not2X times. You believe 
your Bible ; study what this means. 

" Besides, spirit communications have limitations from 
our side. Your scientists smile at this, and say "' that is 
hedging.' But if that be hedging, you will find many illus- 
trations of hedging in your Bible." 



LORD BROUGHAM'S VISION 107 

Quite likely my scientist correspondents will smile on 
reading the above, "Ah, yes," they will laughingly retort; 
" and yet they call this science ! Science bases its conclu- 
sions on the evidence of the senses ; Spiritualism, like Chris- 
tian Science, bases its conclusions on the evidence of the 
non-senses y We must believe in order to see ! 

Some scientists tell us that these phenomena are outside 

of experience and that therefore they can not investigate 

them. Is not that begging the question ? What 

is experience? Will any one say that the fact "Proof not 

that a man has a mind is outside of experience _,. ', 

^ Hence not 

because it does not report itself directly to any Scientific." 
of the five senses } Besides, thousands of these 
psychic facts have been tested by the senses and found to be 
physical facts, by such competent scientific witnesses as 
Crookes, Wallace, and scores and scores of others. 

How shall we escape the fact of the finding of " The 
Widow's Mite," provided coincidence and fraud are excluded.'' 
How shall we escape Lord Brougham's testimony about the 
vision he had of his friend, in accordance with a promise 
which that friend had made to report himself if possible after 
death .'' ' Can we frame a reasonable theory of coincidence ? 
If so, then that itself is worthy of investigation and may 
lead to the discovery of some unthought-of laws that govern 
what we call coincidence. 

It seemed wholly unreasonable to many of the learned men 

in the days of Columbus that by sailing westward he could 

reach India. That the earth vv^as round was a 

direct contradiction of the senses and of the ,. ,. 

dictions to 

then experience. Common sense rebelled at the Senses 
the idea that the world turned upside down not Positive 

every twenty-four hours while water remained „ °° 

•' . . of Error, 

in pots undisturbed. In vain Columbus pre- 
sented a lot of facts, as that of driftwood and of the shadow 
of the earth on the moon. Science threw all this aside as 

* "Life and Times of Lord Brougham," written by himself, pp. zoi-3. 



io8 HUXLEY'S "LITTLE CHILD" 

worthless because it did not accord with the known positive 
mathematical laws of nature and contradicted the common 
observations of man. For a similar reason the French 
Academy of Science outvoted mesmerism in the thirties of 
the last century. The British Science Association refused 
to hear Braid's paper on hypnotism, as they later refused to 
hear Sir William Crookes's paper on his experiments in 
psychic phenomena ; and yet there is no more doubt now 
that hypnotism is a fact than that the sun shines, scientists 
themselves being the witnesses. 

How slow we are to learn with Virchow ^ that " what we 
call the laws of nature must vary according to our frequent 
experiences." If we get hold of a conflicting fact, all we 
have to do is to find out whether it is a fact ; and then, if it 
proves a fact, to enlarge our conception of the domain of the 
natural world, of science. S'ays Professor James : * " . . . 
And it so happens a fact is denied till a welcome interpreta- 
tion comes with it. Then it is admitted readily enough. " 
Science will not accept a fact until she can give an expla- 
nation for it. Many a scientific skeptic like Hume cries 
out : " Laugh at the miracles of Christ without any exami- 
nation of them." The scientists say, "The superstitious 
accept the phenomena without examination^' and then turn 
around and reject the phenomena withoiU examination. 
Which is the more irrational and unscientific act .? Possibly 
the world will again see a stone which the builders re- 
jected taking its place at the head of the corner. Here is 
an anomaly : The pride of modern science is induction. This 
is its fetish ; but before a mass of psychic facts it comes to 
a dead halt and refuses to take up these facts, because it 
does not know where they will land science. Where in this 
is the spirit of Huxley's little child.-' 

Scientists cry out : " We see on every hand in these 
phenomena evidences of ignorance, superstition, credulity, 

' Moll's " Hypnotist," p. 357. 

■ " Principles of Psychology," vol. ii., p. 612. 



KANT'S THEORY 109 

blind sentimentality." True, but there is clear evidence of 
something underneath and beyond all this rubbish. But, it 
is said, this is not a science. True again ; it is an immense 
accumulation of facts, many verified, others partially verified 
— facts, as I have already said, that suggest the possible dis- 
covery of a world more important than the discovery made by 
Columbus, a world that may be just below the horizon toward 
which the earth is turning. Science comes slowly after the 
facts are known — continuity, self-consistency, harmony after 
demonstration; but the preliminary work, the unearthing and 
the verification of the facts should also be the work of 
scientists. 

It is urged that science has nothing to do with effects 
that are beyond natural causes. Is not this another man of 
straw .'' What reason is there to doubt that if spirits are be- 
hind any of these phenomena they are doing their work in 
perfect harmony with natural law, the same as is the farmer 
when he makes his field grow wheat instead of thistles.-' 
What is a farmer but a spirit enrobed in skin .'' What is 
there in flesh and bone to make a boundary line between the 
natural and supernatural? God is the only supernatural 
power — power back of nature. 

Professor Zollner, of Leipsic, after observing many 

psychic phenomena under critical test conditions, explains 

them by Kant's theory that space perceptions are merely a 

category of the understanding ; that in this world there are 

three dimensional intelligences, while there 

are worlds in which there are four dimensional ZoUner's 

Scientific £x- 
mtelligences, others in which there are five, etc. pianation 

Zollner thus explains the spiritual phenomena 
of the tying of knots in an endless chain, levitating tables 
without physical contact until they disappear to reappear 
in another part of the room, passing matter through matter, 
etc., all of which occurrences he vouched for as happening 
in his own room in the full light of day under absolute scien- 
tific test conditions. Tho all this was done, he claims it was 



no ARRANT FOOLS 

done in strict harmony with natural law — that no phenomena 
are supernatural — all natural. 

To get around all this and similar testimony, are scientists 
ready to take the position that human testimony is not to be 
credited in the matter of Spiritualism, no matter how mul- 
titudinous it may be? Again, I ask. Is this the spirit of 
Huxley's little child sitting before a fact interrogating it? 
Tests could not have been made more painstakingly and 
scientifically accurate than those by Robert Hare and Wil- 
liam Russel Wallace and Crookes and Zollner, and by the 
Society for Psychical Research during the past twenty years. 
Are scientists ready to say of such men that they too were 
" such easy dupes as to be arrant fools " ? Tens of thousands 
of men and women, recognized as sensible people in the 
common affairs of life, give testimony to facts the truth of 
which depends upon common honesty. It is becoming more 
and more difficult to waive all of this testimony aside as the 
results of deceptions or faulty observations. 

Alfred Russel Wallace, the eminent English scientist 
and codiscoverer with Darwin of evolution, says, as indi- 
cated in the introductory chapter : '* My position, therefore, is 
that the phenomena of Spiritualism, in their entirety, do not 
require further confirmation. They are proved quite as well 
as any facts are proved in other sciences." Does Wallace 
go too far? Has he generalized too quickly? That may 
be, but it is certain many other scientists are resting at the 
other extreme. There are multitudes of indisputable psychic 
facts that have not been sufficiently examined by scientists, 
and it is surely the business of science to account for facts, 
whether physical, moral, or spiritual. 

Here is one of a class of facts that has come 
Beecher's Jj^^q ^^le experience of many men, and belongs 
Experience. Probably to our subjective natures, but has re- 
ceived not the tenth of attention from scien- 
tists that have the fossil remains of some extinct trilobite : 
Mr. Beecher, years before his death, told me that, when he 



BEECHER'S STRANGE VISION in 

was delivering his famous speech to the mob at Liverpool 
during the Civil War, he felt that he was some distance 
above the platform, watching his other self gaining control 
over the mob ; the experience being that of two distinct per- 
sonalities. Explain that, and we may explain the marvelous 
phenomena of what are called secondary personalities. 

When we see facts that are not accounted for by any 
explanation by scientists, what are we to do ? There is com- 
pulsion in reason as forceful as is gravity. By pooh-poohing 
we never shall be able to stop the exodus to Spiritualism. 
Spiritualists, as well as the rest of us, have a right to demand 
of science a sufficient cause for what they see and hear. The 
flaming out of a heated imagination, the ebullitions of feel- 
ing, are poor foundations to build on, but equally unsatisfac- 
tory is the "won't believe it even if we see it" of science; 
the one is as irrational and unworthy as the other. 

Scientists, as the rest of us, are bound by the everlasting 
law of honor so to spend life that they may know what is 
right, and then help to give it recognition, to give the world 
the best that is in them— each of us alike to think his life 
but a missile to hurl against an error, 

"... an arrow— therefore we must know 
What mark to aim at, how to use the bow — 
Then d?'aw it to the head and let it go." 

This with little or no thought as to the consequences. 

Scientists are swinging away from the scientific material- 
ism of a generation ago. They tell us that there must have 
been an intelligent Creator. Is He dead t If not, where is 
He } If alive, it is the most natural thing to suppose that 
He is here with His work. Then it follows that the mightiest 
force of the universe, the real force, is outside of our physi- 
cal senses; and it also follows that scientists should most 
carefully consider this mightiest of forces and the possibili- 
ties of sensitive human beings through which this force works. 
We must never forget that there is intelligence behind these 



112 VOLTAIRE ON NEWTON 

so-called spiritual phenomena, and that it is not at all likely 
that the forces of nature and its laws can create intelligence. 

Whence this intelligence? Is it from the subjective 
mind? If so, that mind should be explored, its laws of 
development discovered, its tremendous forces intelligently 
utilized. Or is this intelligence from the Beyond ? If so, 
here is a stupendous fact which science should scientifically 
demonstrate. As said Gladstone, these investigations of 
psychic phenomena by science are far more important than 
all other work done on earth. 

A century ago horseback was the most rapid means of 

communication ; now steam and electricity have come. The 

railroad, the telegraph, and the telephone al- 

How the most annihilate distance. " Many shall run 

^ ,,Z^ ,„ to and fro, and knowledge increase," said the 
"Fool" ° 

of Newton, prophet. Sir Isaac Newton, commenting on 
this prophecy, said : " I should not wonder if 
some day men will travel at the rate of fifty miles an hour." 
Voltaire, a great admirer of the English philosopher, speak- 
ing of this comment, declared that this prophecy of God's 
Word made a fool of Newton when it led him to talk that way. 
Prophets are seers, and often see further and clearer than do 
scientists. He is a blundering scientist who refuses hints 
from the world's seers — for a seer is one who sees. 

A man is a lighted candle ; he carries with him a light 
much larger than his physical organization, and this light 
often announces his coming in advance to our senses. What 
if this light also lights up dark places independent of the 
senses ? A soul that has been forming for ages through the 
processes of evolution did crystallize an outward body fitted 
to itself, every part the shadow of a better part within. If 
that be true, the better part of our senses, their substance, is 
to be found within, and the substance in the prophet may 
often do better service than the shadow in the scientist. 

These psychic phenomena when rightly understood may 
prove interesting, startling testimonies coming from a 



UNSCIENTIFIC SCIENTISTS 113 

region not as yet clearly penetrated by a single ray from 
science. 

Some scientists talk about a possible explanation to be 
found in a further analysis of the forces of nature. Very 
well, clearly ascertained facts are necessary for this further 
analysis. And who better than scientists to help on this 
further analysis .'' Others speak about the laws of the mind 
causing us to see things that are not true. Who made these 
laws and just what are they? This also is an excellent line 
of investigation, but let the requirements for the evidence as 
to these facts and the reasoning based upon them be as rigid 
as we are requiring of Spiritualists. Sublimated reasonings 
about a possible subliminal and subjective mind, and about 
odic and other forces, are not satisfactory explanations of 
the finding by Swedenborg of the mislaid receipt, of Lord 
Brougham's vision of his dead friend, of the phenomena Sir 
William Crookes describes as witnessed by himself, of the 
finding of "The Widow's Mite." Science has yet to deal 
seriously and comprehensively with the unanswered question 
about this class of psychic phenomena : 

WHAT IS IT? 

Prof. William James says that a number of his fellow 
professors at Harvard refused to attend a seance to witness 
psychic phenomena, and to which he had invited them. 
Some scientists do not hesitate to declare that they would 
not believe the testimony of their senses if they gave testi- 
mony in favor of these phenomena. Ah, the spirit of Hux- 
ley's little child ! Hegel complained of a similar attitude of 
scientists in his day, of an a priori settlement by scientists of 
what is possible and what is impossible. To them spirit and 
Spiritualism are inherently absurd, and matter contains in 
itself the promise and potency of all life; force, life, thought, 
feeling, heat, light, gravity are only different forms of mat- 
ter. That is a stone wall of skepticism against which it is 



114 BREWSTER'S EXPERIENCE 

useless to butt our heads. Sir David Brewster declared, in 
reference to these phenomena, that " spirit is the last thing 
that I will give in to. " He clung like grim 
Sir David death to his a priori conclusion that spirits do 
c ■ s If ^'^^ return. How a predisposition, a dense 
Contradiction, prejudice may influence and warp the judg- 
ment and memory of so great a scientist even 
as Brewster is illustrated by the following two accounts he 
gave of a seance he attended with the medium, D. D. Home, 
in June, 1855 : 

From an Account by Sir David Brewster in the London Advertiser, 

October 12, 1833 • 

"At Mr. Cox's house, Mr. Home, Mr. Cox, Lord Brougham, and 
myself sat down to a small table, Mr. Home having previously requested 
us to examine if there was any machinery about his person, an examina- 
tion, however, which we declined to make. When all our hands were 
upon the table noises were heard — rappings in abundance ; and, finally, 
when we rose up the table actually rose, as appeared to me, from the 
ground. This result I do not pretend to explain ; but rather than believe 
that spirits made the noise, I will conjecture that the raps were produced 
by Mr. Home's toes, which, as will be seen, were active on another occa- 
sion; . . . and rather than believe that spirits raised the table, I will 
conjecture that it was done by the agency of Mr. Home's feet, which 
were always below it. 

" Some time after this experiment Mr. Home left the room and re- 
turned, probably to equip himself for the feats which were to be per- 
formed by the spirits beneath a large round table covered with copious 
drapery, beneath which nobody was allowed to look} 

" The spirits are powerless above board ; . . . a small hand-bell, to 
be nmg by the spirits, was placed on the ground near my feet. I placed 
my feet round it in the form of an angle, to catch any intrusive apparatus. 
The bell did not ring ; but when taken to a place near Mr. Home's feet, 
it speedily came across and placed itself in my hand. This was amus- 
ing. 

"It did the same thing, bunglingly, to Lord Brougham, by knocking 
itself against his lordship's knuckles, and, after a jingle, it fell. How 
these things were produced neither Lord Brougham nor I could say, but 
I conjecture that they may be produced by machinery attached to the 
lower extremities of Mr. Home." 

1 Home, commenting on this passage, explains that he was seized with a violent 
fit of coughing and left the room to get a handkerchief (" Incidents," First Series, 
p. 238). 



BELIEF AFFECTS MEMORY 115 

From an Account in the Private Diary of Sir David Brewster, Dated 
June, i8s3, and Published after His Death. 

" Last of all I went with Lord Brougham to a s&nce of the new 
spirit-rapper, Mr. Home, a lad of twenty, the son of a brother of the late 
Earl Home. . . . He lives in Cox's Hotel, Jermyn Street; and Mr. Cox, 
who knows Lord Brougham, wished him to have a seance, and his lord- 
ship invited me to accompany him in order to assist in finding out the 
trick. We four sat down at a moderately sized table, the structure of 
which we were invited to examine. In a short time the table shuddered, 
and a tremulous motion ran up all our arms ; at our bidding these motions 
ceased and returned. The most unaccountable rappings were produced 
in various parts of the table ; and the table actually rose from the ground 
when no hand was upon it. A larger table was produced and exhibited 
similar movements. ... A small hand-bell was then laid down with its 
mouth on the carpet; and, after lying for some time, it actually rang 
when nothing could have touched it. The bell was then placed on the 
other side, still upon the carpet, and it came over to me and placed itself 
in my hand. It did the same to Lord Brougham. These were the prin- 
cipal experiments. We could give no explanation of them, and could 
not conjecture how they could be produced by any kind of mechanism." ' 

Concerning the marked discrepancies in these two ac- 
counts by Brewster, Mr. Podmore," altho a disbeliever in 
Spirituahsm, is constrained to remark : 

" It will be seen that in the interval between June and October Brews- 
ter's mental attitude had undergone a decided change, and that he now 
finds himself able to " conjecture " — at a distance of some months from 
the actual facts— how the things were done. It may be urged, indeed, 
that this change of attitude is due to the discoveiy of suspicious circum- 
stances at the second sdance, described in the same letter to The Adver- 
tiser. But no later discoveries of the kind can explain or excuse positive 
discrepancies between the earlier and the later account of the first sitting. 
In the earlier account it is expressly stated that the bell rang on the floor, 
when nothing could have touched it ; in the later account it is stated that 
the bell did not ring ; and various incidents, tending to throw suspicion 
or ridicule on the performance, are introduced for the first time in the 
later account. Suppose the positions had been reversed, and that two 
discrepant accounts of the same sdance, the later account embellished 
with marvelous details which found no place in the contemporary version, 
had been published by some preposterous Spiritualist. Brewster would, 
no doubt, for our warning and edification, have pointed the obvious 

' "The Home Life of Sir D. Brewster, by his daughter, Mrs. Gordon, pp. 257-8, 
Edinburgh, 1869. 



iDurgn, 1869. 

'Podmore's "Modern Spiritualism," vol. ii., pp. 143-4. 



ii6 DANGER OF AUTO-SUGGESTION 

moral; and perhaps, if the names are changed, the moral will still serve. 
But the Spiritualists were denied their revenge, for Brewster's diary was 
only published after his death." 

A scientist may be superstitiously afraid of superstition ; 
nor are all truly scientific who scoff at superstition. He 
talks much of the danger of auto-suggestion. Should he not 
also be on his guard against the auto-suggestion of doubt and 
of predisposition.^ 

The scientist is indignant when told that there is no 
physical world. Why is he surprised that we laugh at him 
when he tells us that there is no spiritual world .'' The latter 
is proved by an interior experience, the other by an exterior. 
As a witness the interior experience has the advantage. Says 
Du Bois-Reymond :^ "In the 'Law Book of Research in 
Natural Science ' we read the same command as in the Scrip- 
tures, * Verily I say unto you, except ye become as a little 
child ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. ' " 

Said Tennyson, " Nothing worth believing can be proven," 
that is, as mathematics prove things or as sense perceptions 
prove things. Sense perceptions claim to be the sole arbiters 
of what is, self-asserting, dogmatizing. The shortest way to 
truth is not to be measured by a tape line. The intellectual 
and spiritual evidence along the lines of inner development 
is a far more certain and direct proof of things that come on 
their plane than are all the senses combined. Here, after 
all, is the only certainty. Those who have not this develop- 
ment are blind and deaf, no matter how delicate and wide 
open their eyes and ears may be. 

If it be true that man is a spirit incarnate, 
If Christ is , . . . , , , , , ,. 

First Fruits ^"y ^^ ^^ mherently absurd to believe, even m 

of the the extremest claim of these spirit controls, 

Besurrection, ^^^q^ |-]^g time will come when a man may take 

up his life and lay it down again.? Christ 

brought life arjd immortality to light. What does that 

mean .'' May it not mean that the ego in man has in it the 

•A Lecture, "Tierische Bewegung." 



TO BE MET SQARELY 117 

power of development by which the last enemy, Death, may 
be overcome ? Goethe once said : " Mankind is always ad- 
vancing, but man remains the same." True, if this refers 
to the race of men, and means that each individual holds 
his position relatively to the whole. The high spiritual powers 
of the race and of individuals are getting into the ascendancy. 
The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The Church has not 
prayed in vain, "Thy kingdom come." The thought that 
Jesus here expresses is of unspeakable power for good in the 
world. 

I repeat, and will repeat until heard, that scientists will 
not get rid of this psychic problem until they meet it seri- 
ously, squarely, and give sufficient answer. 

One earnest man. Garrison, in 1835, said against slavery: 
"I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will be heard." 
He thundered on in spite of ridicule and abuse and mob, until 
all the world listened and the wrong was righted. There are 
ten thousand believers in the truth of psychic phenomena 
to-day determined as was Garrison that this truth be heard. 

A few years ago Henry Seybert, a Spiritualist, bequeathed 

a large amount of money to the University of Pennsylvania. 

This money was to be used primarily in the 

investigation of Spiritualism. Unfortunately '^^^ Seybert 

the fund has been turned aside from the pri- _ ^^~ 

^ Great Wrong 

mary intention of the donor. Provost Pepper Done, 

appointed a committee, giving it little money, 
published a report of failure, and then used the money for 
other purposes. The work done by the Seybert committee 
was exceedingly inefficient, a mere surface investigation. 
The committee had not learned the A B C of investigation of 
these phenomena, such investigation as has been followed by 
the Society for Psychical Research. No one doubts that the 
Society for Psychical Research is investigating Spiritualism 
and finds much to investigate. Why is not the University 
of Pennsylvania carrying out the sacred trust of a dying man 
whose money it has .-* In this the University has done a most 



ii8 A GREAT WRONG DONE 

hurtful, unfair thing, and even now should right as far as 
practicable the wrong. There is not the shadow of a doubt 
as to what the dead man intended. Nor is there any doubt 
that this class of phenomena can be and is being effectively 
investigated. Let the University of Pennsylvania engage a 
man, equipped as is Professor Hyslop or Dr. Hodgson, and 
turn over to him the interest of this fund for a few years, and 
see if he will not have a report of startling importance to 
make. The University of Pennsylvania can not afford to rest 
under the charge made by many intelligent men that it has 
been unfair in carrying out the provisions of a will. 

Frank Podmore, of London, tho hostile to Spiritualism, 
says : ' 

" Spiritualists contend, and not apparently without justification, that 
the intentions of Mr. Seybert were never fairly carried out, and that the 
prepossessions of the committee against the subject under investigation 
are demonstrated by their willingness to leave the inquiry unfinished and 
to divert the funds entrusted to them to an object which was regarded by 
the testator as at most of secondary importance." 

It is a grave pity that this wrong was done. We need 
much of the kind of investigation Seybert had in mind — pa- 
tient, unemotional, exact. Why should not a University deem 
it worthy of itself to help solve the question of personal immor- 
tality, engaging upon its solution with the same patience and 
thoroughness that it has engaged upon other problems .-• A 
few scientists are engaged upon this problem. 
Backward and already reports come from the front that 
g^^'^^^f iR ^ indicate startling progress, and there are many 
Materialism, indications of a backward swing of the pendu- 
lum from materialistic pessimism. Surely it 
is true, as says Andrew Lang : " There can never be any real 
harm in studying masses of evidence from fresh points of 
view. " And let us have the common sense to admit with 
Aristotle : " Things which happened are manifestly possible ; 
for if they had been impossible, they would not have hap- 
pened." 

•"Modern Spiritualism," vol. ii., p. 194. 



THE "COMING ONE" 119 

After some thousands of years of study of the physical 
world we are still conscious that we have but begun its inves- 
tigation. How much more is this true of the psychic world, 
which has not been seriously investigated prior to the last 
quarter of a century ? Let there be careful scientific inves- 
tigation of every evidence of the existence within us of rudi- 
mentary faculties, intended for use possibly when we break 
from this planet and our prisonhouse of flesh and become 
cosmic intelligences. We may discover that these faculties 
have functional uses here and now; and it may be possible 
even for us to find out their laws of development and thus 
help on greatly the evolution of the race. 

If there is a bare possibility of this being true, should it 
not profoundly interest every scientist worthy of the name 
and profoundly interest all other men who care for their 
kind? 

Of this we may be sure, the phenomena, the honest psychic 
phenomena, still await a revealing genius to make them 
plain. 

Science sooner or later will give us that genius. Is it 
needful, in view of the rapidly increasing multitude of 
psychic events, to put the ear close to the ground to hear the 
steppings of the "coming one," a scientist by faith enlight- 
ened to be in this the world's Parsifal .'' I am not a prophet, 
nor the son of a prophet, nor do I count myself in " the 
sunset of life," nor gifted with a "mystical lore," and hence 
could only say Amen if some such a one should apply to 
psychic phenomena these words of the poet : Tho 

"... my sight I should seal, 
Yet I can not cover what God would reveal. 
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, 
And coming events cast their shadows before." ' 

» Campbell : " Lochiel's Warning." 



IV 

SPECIAL "SPIRIT-TALKS" TO CLERGYMEN 

" You are a clergyman " is a greeting I meet with at 
almost every new circle or seance which I attend; "we have 
something special to say to you." 

My answer usually is : " Say on." 

And they say on, wise or otherwise, more often the latter; 
often these utterances are very curious, and sometimes so 
profound as to give me reason for pause. Frequently they 
are the voices of criticism. Take this one : 

" Your histories of the Christian Church, biographies of 
many of your saints, histories of your denominations, and of 
many of your revivals are shot through and 
A Criticism through with vanity. Vanity has played a 
Churclies great part in the advance of the churches, in 
the persecutions that have arisen, and in the 
religious controversies, and it is to be found in not a little 
degree in your creeds. No man is truly religious who does 
not care for something intensely outside and above himself. 
You need a church that cares first of all for the glory of the 
truth and for the uplifting of humanity, a church that is 
alive and loves, that draws the energy of life out of the free 
air and the free sunshine, whose organism never degenerates 
into mere mechanism, but is an organism that adapts means 
to ends, as the growth of humanity makes man vary. How 
can the machinery of the Middle Ages help you now and 
here in America .'' To have fine church buildings, eloquent 
preachers, big pew rentals, and increasing membership — 
what are all these but vanity.-* Go wash the feet of the poor, 
give drink to the thirsty, and put new heart into the dis- 
couraged — that is what you ought to do. 



HEAVEN AT HAND 121 

"The street harlots are nearer the kingdom of heaven 
than is the average preacher, for the average preacher has 
become the slave of organization, and organization is mechan- 
ical. His faith and his love for men are kept in the cold 
storage of an icy heart. I tell you, the spirit world is com- 
ing on the earth like a rising tide, now here, now there, now 
everywhere, receding now and then, only to advance with 
renewed strength. If you preachers will not hear us, we 
shall find our audiences even among the poorest, as did Jesus. 

" The best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him. ..." 

Yes, you will then make hysterical haste to investigate. 
When that time comes remember that this knowledge does 
not come by frenzy, but by meditation, study, growth. 

" If you will open wide the door of faith to the spirit 
world, you will see that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, 
and you will cast out Satan, the world spirit, and then the 
angels of God will minister to you. " ' 

Here my skepticism got the better of me : 

Question : " But how do I know that you are a good 
spirit and not an evil one, or that you are even a spirit.'* 
How can I tell that there is anything here beyond my senses, 
that I am not now pumping at a dry well ? " 

Answer : " One who asks that can not know. Your ma- 
terialism is the stone wall that hinders your progress. You 
shut your eyes and say that there is no such thing as light. 
Friend, to get rid of spirit phenomena you are getting rid of 
the Bible, exchanging humming-birds for mosquitoes, killing 
roses to grow docks, running from sheep to wolves. Awake, 
ye sleepers, look up, you are not alone. The hills and the 

1 " Up to the highest cycles to which I have access, the distribution of force 
comes through what on your plane are called vibrations. Forces through vibration 
are brought to bear upon the lower cycles by the higher, and through them is the 
communication of the lower possible with the higher. Our Savior performed 
His miracles through these forces which connected Him with the Father. He 
says, I and my Father are one ; now, this oneness existed in His willingness to be 
led and in His obedience to the will of God. This made it possible for the high 
forces to enter His soul and to control Him." '• Pastor "—see Preface. 



122 COMMUNION OF SAINTS 

valleys are covered with multitudes. There is no death. 
How long, oh, how long will ye sleep, O fellow men? 
Read your Bible ; it tells you, to some will be given the gift 
of healing, to others the gift of discerning spirits. Was this 
said only for the old times or for all time ? The same law 
governs now that governed then. Only now your unbelief has 
hardened into a rock." 

At this point I remonstrated, urging that the spirit com- 
munion in the Bible times was for a special purpose, and had 
ceased. Without replying to my remark he continued : 

"The seventy rejoiced that the demons were subject to 

them, and Christ said He saw Satan fall as the lightning 

from heaven. We and you can rule over the evil spirits. 

They who came to Jesus desired more and more visible signs, 

until Christ denounced them as hypocrites who could discern 

the signs of the sky but could not forecast the coming of the 

spirit powers. Where in Scripture do you preachers find 

your intense opposition to all spirit communion .-* That is a 

book full of spirit phenomena. You say, ' We believe in the 

communion of saints.' Cease your hypocrisies and lies. 

Tell the truth, say you believe in the communion of saints 

on earth, in communion only when it takes place through 

your carnal senses, and that you believe there is no other 

communion. 

Contrasted " The first time Saul heard a voice speaking 

« ,y^^ ^ to him from heaven he straightway believed. 
Saul's R^ady ^ -^ 

Belief. ^^.d it been you, you had been startled for a 

day or two, and then reasoned that it was 

some subjective mind delusion, or that one of the soldiers had 

hypnotized you, or some juggler's trick had been played 

upon you ; ^ and with the aid of your excited imagination 

1 " True, much harm has come to the earth through these sources, so has much 
harm come in many forms from the unskilful and indiscriminate use of dyna 
mite ; yet dynamite is one of the mightiest and most helpful of your forces 
Would you banish it from the world because it has brought destruction m the 
hands of the ignorant few ? It is equally foolish to stamp Spiritualism as harmfiil 
and debasing because in the hands of the ignorant or vicious it has wrought 
barm. No, my friends, learn how to handle the explosive dynamite and you will 



SPIRIT SENSES 



123 



and thoughts of ventriloquism and vain belief in your su- 
perior discernment, you would have put your conscience to 
sleep and have gone on with your persecutions. Saul 
was proud, had love for consistency, was loyal to his 
beliefs and comrades, and was well balanced, and yet he 
turned abruptly, opening wide the gates of his soul ; be- 
ware lest you be of the number who will not know when 
God speaks. Christ says there will be those who know 
His voice; others who will not know it. Many clergymen 
there are now, as in the days of Christ in Palestine, who are 
not able to distinguish the voices of the spirit world from 
the noises of earth. Why.? You have not the spiritual 
growth that develops the spirit senses. These things are 
spirit, and to be heard must be listened to by a developed 
spirit nature. How will you know in 'that day' that Jesus 
is in the Father ."^ You will not be able to see Him. If 
you do not radically change, you will be forever 'doubting 
Thomases. ' 

"Your unbelief is provincialism, not Christianity; it is 
of this hard, commercial age. Christianity is universal truth. 
No one can be a developed Christian who is not loyal to 
universal truth. You are loyal to truths that come in at the 
doors of your senses, and to no other truth. You say that 
you do not know; say rather you will not know. If you 
wish to know, rise and follow the pillar of fire by day and 
the cloud by night, for God is in them. He is where sincer- 
ity is. Your unbelief has sent you into the wilderness for 
more than forty years, but you will reach the other side; 
whether this year or a billion years hence, you must deter- 
mine. 

receive no little advantage ; so learn how to use mediumship and you will re- 
ceive untold advantage. Let your thoughts dwell upon things above, and by 
a reasoning faith, and a sincere desire perfect your life here so as to perform the 
mission your Christ has placed before you, and you will find a ready solution to 
many of earth's unsolved problems ; and by developing a spiritual insight there 
will be revealed to you such an unbounded world of experience that your souls 
will be lifted far beyond the boundaries of earth. This vision will give you a con- 
scious connection with the world above, and with friends now invisible and to 
you unreal." " Pastor "—see Preface. 



124 KEEP MEDIUMS PURE 

"Keep your mediums, I entreat you, honest and pure. 
Let your circles be holy places. Do not let the mediums 
be the victims of curiosity or of whim as were the subjects 
of hypnotism a generation ago. You have here the force of 
forces. Learn prayerfully to utilize it. Friend, hear me 
— -you need me; I do not need you. 

" The heart of the Church beats altogether too feebly. 
We would administer to it the digitalis of Spiritualism." 

Why this reasoning is not satisfactory to me is because 
the proof I ask for is on the physical plane, while the proof 
this spirit talks about is on the spiritual plane. To know 
Christ spiritually and believe that He was sent down from 
the Father is one thing, but for the disciples to have believed 
that the one who claimed to be Christ after the resurrection 
was the same person they had previously known as Christ 
was altogether a different matter. The one required a spiri- 
tual growth that would give spiritual discernment ; the other 
required memory of physical facts. Christ identified Him- 
self to the disciples at Emmaus by breaking bread in the way 
that they had seen Him do it before death, and He identified 
Himself to Thomas by the wounds in His hands and His 
side — all physical facts. All Thomas needed was memory; 
it surely did not require growth to remember the spear and 
the nails. But " in that day " to know that Christ is in the 
Father, and we in Him, and He in us, will xto^vco. growth. 
My spirit mother can identify herself to me by an appeal to 
my memory in telling me facts only known to herself and 
myself. When I ask for such proof, and am answered. You 
must grow spiritually before it can be given you, is it strange 
that I deem this information inconclusive.^ The puzzle is 
that this intelligence, if he was what he claimed to be, did 
not reason more closely. Yet, on the other hand, if he was 
not what he claimed to be, what was he } I continued the 
talk with this intelligence : 

Question : " I hold in my hand a letter from an eminent 
clergyman, who says that in his experience much harm has 



A GIGANTIC FACT 125 

come from Spiritualism; many members have been drawn 

from his and other churches by it ; husbands and wives have 

been separated, and industrious men made idlers and ruined. 

What reply to this ? " 

Answer : " A new truth often works harm. Have you 

forgotten how in the early history of Christianity many 

threw off all restraint and went naked ? Do 

you not remember the story of the Anabap- Is Spiritual- 

tists in Luther's day.? Was not the Salem ^ ^ ^^ ^ 
■' , to the 

witchcraft an outgrowth of belief in the Bible.'' Churcli? 
Master the laws of Spiritualism on your side, 
let us master them on ours, and then you may judge. Do 
not come to hasty conclusions. Many thousands of people 
have been killed by electricity. What is the remedy .'' Mas- 
ter its laws, and then you have a great helper. Avoid hasty 
conclusions, that bane of reasoning. 

" You compel us to repeat truths again and again. Why 
are you so slow to believe .-* Why do you not understand } 
You must realize it to be a fact that evil spirits have among 
them those who are capable of great cunning and deviltry, 
who come to you in the garb of angels of light, and are wolves 
in sheep's clothing, that they may deceive all those who are 
not spiritually proof against them, proof by the law of good 
intention. You are face to face with a gigantic fact that 
means both good and evil. A medium can become an open 
door through whom will come a most disagreeable set of 
people from the other world or a most agreeable set of people ; 
it will all depend upon yourself and upon your medium. 
You get what you bring. The circle simply reveals the 
manifestations you make possible. You determine the kind 
of manifestations these will be.' Moses called good spirits, 

* " This is very true ; and why do you hesitate to accept it ? Would you not ex- 
pect that the conditions are essentially different in a room filled with people cul- 
tivated and congenial, filled with the fragrance of flowers, and vibrant with sweet 
music, from what they are in a gambling-hell, no matter how brilliant the lights 
and alluring the siirroundings, and the courtesies given you ? In the atmosphere of 
the one there would be to your soul harmony and peace; in that of the other there 
would be disturbance and unrest, no matter bow gaudy or glittering in outward 



ia6 KEY TO THE BIBLE 

and then the magicians called evil spirits to imitate the won- 
ders that Moses wrought. The magicians did all that Moses 
did. It was not wise then to deny the genuine because of 
the correctness of the counterfeit. Pharaoh did, and made 
an awful mistake. It would be unfortunate if the Church 
were not wiser to-day. 

" Spiritualism is the natural heirloom of the Church, and 
should be hailed with rejoicing. Rightly understood, it is 
the key to the Bible and it will usher in your millennium. 
It will teach you to love truth, goodness, spirituality, and to 
prefer others to yourselves — these are more to be desired 
than your billions of money and all of your physical discov- 
eries. You churchmen have a moral and spiritual astigma- 
tism distressful to behold, and yet you think you have per- 
fect sight. You repeat to yourselves the blindness of the 
Pharisees when Jesus was with them. You too are blind 
leaders of the blind ! 

" How will this age escape the pathetic experience of 
Rome and Greece when those people became conscious that 
their faith in their gods had died } 

" You say you believe in the spirit world. Put then your 
belief to the test of a full investigation, and see if spirits will 
not respond. Do this in the right mind, with effort to realize 
that your faith is a fact, and you will be led logically to accept 
spirit communication. 

" You clergymen are too busy taking care of the machin- 
ery of religion to look for God in the machine. You wor- 
ship the letter, but forget that the letter killeth. Accept 
Spiritualism, understand the laws of mediumship, and protect 

appearance. You would feel the one elevating, the other debasing. The occu- 
pants of the latter might assume the outward garb of light, but to your soul 
there would be the grinning skull behind the smiling face. However pure the 
atmosphere you take with you, in this wicked place it will become vitiated, un- 
clean, partaking of the nature of the surrounding atmosphere. In this way it is 
that a class of wicked persons invite spirits that are in harmony, and the medium 
is the conductor through which all these influences must be expressed. How can 
communications be of a high order if the correspondences are of a low order ? It 
would be as impossible as it is for you to draw from a stagnant pond the clear 
sparkling waters of a mountain rill." " Pastor "—see Preface. 



DECORATED CORPSES 127 

and develop mediums, and you will find that Spiritualism 
will be the greatest friend the Church has had since Jesus 
left earth. Do not be afraid that Spiritualism will destroy 
the Church. It may burst the rivets and loose the joints in 
much of your dogmatic theology, but it will leave the essen- 
tials of religion, of Christianity unchanged — these are in- 
grained in the mental and spiritual universe. Fear not, the 
physical universe will be ground to powder before one jot or 
tittle of a spirit truth will fail," 

I replied : But how are we to judge Spiritualism except 
by its fruit.'' Thus judged, it merits little recognition by 
the Church. What has it done.-* His reply was that Spiri- 
tualism, through the investigations of leading scientists who 
are almost in spite of themselves making clear the spirit 
origin of some of these phenomena, as the Society for 
Psychical Research, has already stemmed the current of 
scientific materialistic thinking, so that now the materialism 
in the Church was the chief danger. He continued: 

" Materialistic thinking is the dead weight on the Church. 
It has been said that about the only light of heaven that gets 
into your churches is through the colored glass 
in your pictured windows — a light that is dimly Revelation 
religious, all too dimly so. Why think that , 

all revelation ended with Patmos.? Interro- Patmos. 
gate the spirit world as the prophets did., but 
do it as the prophets did. They came with fasting and 
prayer and faith. Do likewise and hearken for answer, for 
all heaven will move to reply. ^ 

" A materialistic Church has no vitality. It is dead. 
Your light is darkness. Your salt has lost its savor. Great 
buildings, great organs, elaborate music, splendid ritual, and 
marvelous benevolences, in themselves are only painted fires 
and decorated corpses. 

» "Fasting- and prayer are as important factors to pure Spiritualism as air, 
food, and water are necessary for the preservation of life. The failure to come to 
Spiritualism in this spirit is the cause of so much disappointment." "Pastor" — 
see Preface. 



128 GULF OF MATERIALISM 

" Hearken to me, ye men of the Church, and your ship of 
Christian faith will sail with an even keel tho the breeze 
from the spirit land through the cabinet gateways helps fill 
its sails — will sail with a more even keel and far greater 
speedway." 

These " talks " to clergymen by the spirits are frequently 
aimed even more directly against the prevailing materialism 
of the age. The following is brief but vigorous : 

" Your world is well-nigh swept into the gulf of utter 
materialism, as the result of the scientific atheism taught a 
generation ago by your Huxleys and Tyndals and Darwins 
and Spencers. It is a mad age of commercialism. The 
ablest of your men spend life most absurdly and count this 
superior civilization. As your Shakespeare says, ' They 
pile up gold ' — they pile up honor, they pile up pleasure — 
' like bees taking toll from every flower, thighs packed with 
wax, mouths with honey, bring it to the hives, and like the 
bees are murdered for their pains.' 

" Yours is the gilden age ; call it not the golden. Even 

to the larger part of clergymen a spirit world is a dream. 

You require a thousand times more proof for 

Gilden, spiritual facts than material. Why.? Jesus 
not a Golden . , ^ ^ , . . . , • , , , 

^ said to His disciples as with alarm they saw 

Him asleep when the storm was on, ' O ye of 

little faith.' Thomas would have taken His disciples' word 

for the size of a tree or the draft of fishes, but not for the 

vision they had that proved that Jesus was seen alive after 

death. The Church has not outgrown this faithless spirit, 

but has strengthened it. Break through the stone wall 

of your materialism. The grave is not the sepulcher of 

your dreams. Believe me, Spiritualism is able to furnish 

to the world a scientific basis for Christianity. That is 

its mission. It makes the spirit phenomena of the Bible 

continuous. 

" We come to save you from materialism. Communion 

with the spirit world is a necessity to you. This is but the 



CROWD OF WITNESSES 129 

beginning of a stupendous upheaval of that molten mass that 
lies down deep in man's nature, and which in the past now 
and then has faintly revealed its presence. You must not 
limit the capacity of the infinite for new things. What if 
God means again, after nineteen hundred years, to have the 
spirit world break into full evidence — fuller than then.-* 
Men do not take kindly to the disturbance of their material- 
istic slumbers by voices from the unseen world, and they 
dogmatize about the impossibility of such voices. Foolish 
people, not to know that Providence intends just such dis- 
turbance. You can not turn back by a hair's breadth your 
earth on its axis, and yet you think to reverse the lever of 
the moral universe when held by the hand of the Omnipotent 
One. You spin a cobweb around the earth and imagine that 
you can stop its progress." 

Question : " But what is your remedy .■' In what way 
would spirit communication supply a remedy } " 

"What the world needs is outlook; believe with Paul 
that you are surrounded with a multitude of witnesses. You 
must have a rational scientific answer ' Yes ' to the question, 
* If a man die shall he live again.'' ' Were you to have open 
communication with your spirit mother, your father, your 
child, with a Beecher, a Lincoln, a Thomas a Kempis, the 
Misses Carey, Margaret Fuller, and were you to know that 
these people were looking at you, would you not act more 
nobly ? 

" No ; you do not believe in the * communion of the saints ' 
or even in the resurrection of the dead. Let one tell you 
that he spoke to your dead, and, like Thomas, you would 
say it is too absurd for credence. Even tho you your- 
self saw them, )^ou would doubt your own eyes. Dog- 
matic acceptance is not belief. In that day many shall 
say, Lord, Lord, have we not done this and that in Thy 
name.? but He shall say to you, I never knew you, depart 
from Me. 

" I tell you your dogmatic religious belief is jacked up 
9 



I30 "FACTS BEAT ME" 

to a level far beyond that of your spiritual development and 
real intelligence ; and your seen world is the visible stage of 
the unseen intelligences of the spirit world. I say intelli- 
gences. 

" A man can turn a wilderness into a garden and a garden 
into a wilderness, a straight tree into a crooked 

Power ^^^ ^^ ^ crooked one into a straight one. Is 
of Man and 
Spirits it hard for you to believe that even greater 

to Help or freedom and power belong to the spirit world 

to Mar ^ ]^ I ^Q j^^j. Qq(^'s physical universe? 

God's Work. ^^ ^ . . //,, , i ^u ^ 

Have not your own scientists told you truly that 

ether and matter do occupy the same space at the same time ; 
and why not two worlds here in the same space be now at 
work.?" 

A long talk followed on the materialistic tendencies of 
the Church. I combated some of the criticisms, but to 
others! had to plead guilty for the Church. 

The specific suggested by this " spirit control " for the 
mental and spiritual disease of materialism was certainly 
efficient in the case of the famous scientist, Alfred Russel 
Wallace, who says, in the first edition of his " Miracles arid 
Modern Spiritualism," published in 1874: "Up to the time 
when I first became acquainted with the facts of Spiritual- , 
ism, I was a confirmed philosophical skeptic. . . . The facts 
beat me." 

And Judge Edmonds, writing of Prof. Robert Hare, then 
Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, 
and to this day a celebrated scientist, says : 

" Dr. Hare has all his life long been an honest, sincere, and inveter- 
ate disbeliever in the Christian religion. But late in life Spiritualism 
comes to him, and in a short time works in his mind the conviction of the 
existence of a God and his own immortality. . . . The last time I ever 
saw him he told me that he was at length a full believer in the revelations 
through Jesus— that, in fine, he was now a Christian, full in faith— that 
but a few days before he had made a public proclamation of his belief at 
a meeting which he had addressed at Salem, Mass., and he read me a 
long article on that subject, which he had prepared for publication." 



"BY THEIR FRUITS" 131 

This is a test that Spiritualism must be able to stand : 

"By their fruits shall ye know them." If 

these fruits are not sweet, pure, uplifting, true, Test that 

f- • • 1- • II 1 Spirit- 

then Spiritualism is worthless and must per- ualism Must 

ish. In making this test, I would also apply Stand, 

literally this text of John's : 

" Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they 
are of God. . . . Hereby know ye the Spirit of God : Every spirit that 
confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God : and every 
spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of 
God" (i John iv. 1-3). 

This to me is the supreme test of the rightness of Spiri- 
tualism : Does it recognize Jesus Christ as the revealer of the 
living God? To me this Jesus is the Light of the world, 
and His cross is the Niagara bridge over an otherwise im- 
passable gulf. Tiiere is that in my deepest experience that 
responds to Christ, the Lamb of God that taketh away the 
sins of the world; when I am at my best I know that I am 
utterly unworthy of the inner kingdom, and this sense of 
unworthiness increases as my inner life develops. Hence 
Jesus Christ becomes to me more and more a necessity — 
one whose righteousness in some profound way takes the 
place of my unrighteousness. As said Gladstone, dying : 
The righteousness of Jesus Christ is my only trust. 

If Spiritualism were wholly the outcome of fraud, of 

coincidence, of the subjective faculties of the medium, of 

evil or undeveloped spirits, then it may not 

know Jesus Christ ; but if these communings «, x, ^-.l x 
-' ' ° Substitute. 

be from spirits who are from beyond and above, 
they will confess Christ the Savior. With me this proof of 
identity does not rest upon a dogma, but upon the necessity 
of my inner experience ; as much as would proof of identity 
with a Mozart rest upon an expression of music, or with an 
Angelo upon the expression of beauty. It is not intellectual ; 
it is experimental. 

I do not think that I magnify unduly. Christianity. 



132 WHERE RELIGIONS MEET 

While I say that it is right, if correctly understood, at all 
points, I do not say that other religions are right at no point. 
There is a radical difference between Christianity and other 
religions, yet if we go down deep enough, as one control put 
it to me, we shall reach a point where all religions meet. 
Lessing illumines this thought neatly where he has the 
Jewish Nathan say to the Christian monk : " Heaven bless 
us ! That which makes me to you a Christian, makes you to 
me a Jew. " 

A man should not be afraid of 

" Truth wherever found, 
On heathen or on Christian ground ; 
Among his friends, among his foes, 
The plant is divine where'er it grows." 

The indifference, if not the hostility, of many Spiritual- 
ists toward Jesus Christ stands as a barrier to the progress of 
Spiritualism in the Church. In this they are often misun- 
derstood, for a large class of Spiritualists are imaginative and 
sentimental with little care for systematic or careful state- 
ment of religious truth. 

Religion with other Spiritualists is only communion with 
intelligences who exist out of the flesh — intelligences on 
their own moral and religious plane. They believe them- 
selves talking with folks who think as they think. 

They must let me thunder in their ears the instruction of 
their own spirit controls — I have heard it so often that I can 
not forget it : 

Forever the law holds, like draws like — those who are 
hateful, selfish are apt to hear talk of that kind, and their 
associates, whether in the flesh or out of the flesh, will be of 
that order. Were all the talks heard in Spiritualist circles 
after this sort, these phenomena might be of little value ex- 
cept as proof conclusive that there are intelligences inde- 
pendent of nerve- and brain-cells — that there is life beyond 
the grave. But this is not all, nor nearly all, that comes 



HELPFUL TALK 133 

from the stance room. There frequently come from the 
cabinet requests for sacred songs, as " Nearer, my God, to 
Thee," "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," "Blest be 
the Tie," "Rock of Ages," and often most Whence 
earnest appeals to the intemperate, the pro- o"^s is 
fane, the immoral, the selfish to cease all wick- of Talk ? 
edness, to live clean lives, giving strong 
reasons for these appeals, and other helpful talk. If all 
this be the work of devils, does it not suggest a house divided 
against itself? It is much easier to believe this the work 
of a fevered subjective mind — that is, if we have conclusive 
proof that there is in us such a mind. 

At a certain seance we were earnestly urged : 

" Free yourselves from selfishness. You are not living 
as brothers on earth, and this is the reason of so much of 
your affliction. You profess the Christian religion. Live 
it ; give to others, give what you have, give yourselves. Jesus 
did this, and He is the way. This is not Christian, Jewish, 
Buddhistic, but simple truth. The path of self- surrender is 
love for God, for man, for right. It is seeking first the good 
of others, and then finding that all other things come freely. 

" Hear me, Jesus Christ is over all, the greatest and high- 
est of spirits. To Him all must be conformed ; there can 
be no spiritual advance except by being conformed to the 
requirements of the God-man, Earth life is too short to 
meet the requirements of God's type. Growth goes on from 
cycle to cycle. It is not well to tell you all, all that this 
means, nor could you understand it were I able to tell it to 
you. 

" You get rid of blame for sin by pardon in Christ, but 
not of the effects of sin. The effects must be outgrown, 
and growth comes from the purpose of the heart, from the 
free-will effort of the sinner. The spiritual husbandman 
also gets his harvest by the sweat of exertion. In this work 
there is no substitution. You must work out your own sal- 
vation; so must spirits in every cycle. We in our spirit 



134 STILL "HIGHER CRITICISM" 

sphere can hear the heart-throb of the higher spirit worlds in 
their desires to help. 

" Some of you find it hard to believe that Jonah was swal- 
lowed by the whale, and you think that that story should be 
torn out of the Bible. That story is true, 

God tightly tmderstood. My dear friends, I have 

Never Made .,• ^ 4. n u ^ -n 1 

many things to tell you, but will say now only 

without Spots, this : Eye hath not seen and ear hath not heard 

the full meaning of your Bible. Do not lose 

faith in it. God has never made a sun without spots ; that 

is His way." 

Higher criticism, if this be really spirit talk, may find a 
formidable rival in a still higher criticism. It would be 
worth going some distance to hear Dr. Briggs or Dr. Lyman 
Abbott arguing these points with some disembodied intelli- 
gence in a darkened seance-room ! After the battle of Gettys- 
burg, Lincoln said : " This war is being fought over our heads." 
If the contention of Spiritualists should turn out true, this 
saying of Lincoln's will have an extended and tremendous 
application. What will scholarship count for should we all 
become Spiritualists.'' The seance-room would be exalted 
above the university. I propounded this objection, half in 
amusement, to this spirit control. He answered promptly : 
" Your universities very largely would then determine the 
quality of the seance circles, for remember the eternal law, 
like draws like." He continued: 

'' You need the spirit world to help you in the compre- 
hension of spiritual truths, and it can and does help far — 
immensely far — beyond what you think. There are many 
conscientious Spiritualists who overdo by being overzealous. 
They are like a high-mettled horse, which often spoils its 
work and tires itself out by needless exertion. It is well at 
times to stand still with a live, active faith and see the ease 
with which problems are solved. The solution comes, you 
know not how, but it comes. But unless your hearts are 
rightly attuned to the higher spirit worlds, you will receive 



THERE IS NO DEATH 135 

no messages from thence. That you receive none is proof 
only that there is fault in you; your receiver- hearts need 
fresh attunement." 

A Member of the Circle : " We thank you, spirit con- 
trol, for what you are giving us and getting others to give us. " 

Control : " No, my dear sir, it is God you are to thank, 
for all good things come from Him. He is over all and 
in all. 

" Life is one, true religion is one; yet the religions are 
many. There is no death. There are countless streams of 
personalities in the infinite ocean of life. This ocean is 
one. We live in God ; but God is righteousness and love, 
and a spirit that is not righteousness and love is a disturb- 
ance in the ocean, a storm-center. He is not at peace and 

never can be until he also is righteousness and 
, , , ^ ,7^ „ , . . Gods' Re- 

love, and the great ocean of life — God — is in storing Love 

trouble until that spirit is in harmony. God Never 
leaves the ninety and nine and seeks and re- Ceases toward 
stores the one. That is the Christ spirit of 
this ocean. That is religion. The measure of character in 
the high realms is what he gives. To be Godlike is to be 
like God, and that is to give. All else is selfishness. 
Christ's mission was to reveal this truth— this He did by a 
life of sacrifice. To be a Christian is to do the same. All 
creeds and ceremonies are the mere shells of religion; this 
alone is the kernel. Have this and you have all ; have all 
else and not this, and you have nothing. This was what 
made Christ the light of the world; it is the light of all 
spheres. He is a Christian who has it, and he also is a light. 
This is the sun to spirit eyes. Where it is not is darkness 
to the spirit, and that spirit that has it not is in outer dark- 
ness and is darkness. This love is gravity to the spirit ; 
it draws a soul toward the heart of God, never ceasing to 
draw until that soul is Godlike. That soul is born again 
every time it ascends from cycle to cycle — that is to higher 
light and life. 



136 BEECHER AND INGERSOLL 

" Creeds and dogmatisms and forms and ceremonies pass 
away, but the reasons for them remain and men will never 
outgrow religion. 

" The motion of the universe is toward wisdom and con- 
science and duty and love. If any one would have success 
let him go with this sweep. Against it is eternal destruc- 
tion, hell. The law is eternal ; it is eternally true that that 
way is hell. It is eternally true that a man in that way is 
in hell. But no man falls outside of the reach of God's 
affections; he falls not backward, but forward into God's 
arms. Yet God is righteous, absolutely and immovably so. 
In the inner world punishment is never partial nor arbitrary, 
but is always in strict accordance with desert. Justice and 
mercy join in sacrifice ; the supreme exhibition 
Divine Justice of this was in Christ. You say that you do 

„ .^ . -, . not understand how this can be. Neither can 
Maniiested m 

Christ. we understand it fully, but waves come down 
from cycle to cycle with which this thought 
harmonizes. We know that through sacrifice of the pure for 
the impure, God can be just and yet exalt every soul that 
turns its yearnings toward Him. No yearning for a better 
life is lost. Somewhere and somehow it will bear fruit after 
its kind. All efforts for the benefit of others can not but 
have good results. Do not let this truth of infinite goodness 
and love be an anesthetic truth to you, but a stimulative 
one. Your own poet, Tennyson, quoted in a letter to his 
son, * The love of God constraineth us ' ; it should not only 
restrain, but quicken in us new life and zeal. 

" We look upon sin here as you look upon the disease of 
the body — a soul disease. There is a difference; but we 
have soul retreats, soul hospitals. Do not understand this 
literally. You can not understand me in this until you have 
grown much, very much. 

" I see Mr. Beecher talking to Robert G. IngersoU. Mr. 
Ingersoil has made very rapid advancement and is a bright 
spirit. He and Mr. Beecher are often together and are close 



MATTER-OF-FACT PEOPLE 137 

friends. Mr. Beecher says — he smiles when he says it — 
that I shall tell clergymen that ' in some things on earth 
Ingersoll was more nearly right than was I. I did not 
always speak my fullest and largest conviction. He did, 
and sometimes a little more. ' " 

Right glad was I to get this news, and can only wish that 
the later reports — when we are more sure of the wires and 
the identity of the reporter — may fully confirm it; much 
gladder than I should have been had I been made sure that 
these two stalwart spirits — one when on earth a strong be- 
liever in the Bible, as he interpreted it ; the other a bitter 
antagonist, no matter who interpreted it — stood now, like 
those in Coleridge's Christabel : 

. . . Stood aloof, the scars remaining, 
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder, 
A dreary sea rolling between. 

The talk continued, 

"The great seed-house of earth is the spirit world. 

" Do not think that this spirit world is all sentiment. It 
is thought, order; not chaos. Were there real faith among 
men, faith in the spirit world, then you would 
give us a fair opportunity to help, and you could seed-House of 
judge by results. The power behind all great Earth 

movements on earth is the spirit world. In ^^ *^® Spirit 

World 
your world rise and fall the tides of our think- 
ing. The work to be done is to break down the partition 
walls of unbelief between your life and ours that there may 
be unrestricted intercourse. This truth is one of immense 
importance. 

" You say these angels do not talk as you thought angels 
would talk. Did you think us ethereal, dreamy ; and instead 
you find us a matter-of-fact people ? We are your brothers, 
a mighty spirit world of men and women obscured from you 
behind a veil of flesh that hides your eyes. Our world inter- 
sperses yours. We also have bodies ; the vibrations of our 



138 KIND TO ANIMALS 

bodies are more rapid than those of the ;r-ray, so that we can 
pass through all of what you call solids, as the ;r-ray passes 
through some, and as Christ's resurrected body passed through 
the closed door into the presence of His disciples. 

" I will show you how altogether human we are : There 
is here a little girl who has passed out of life only a short 
time, and she wishes me to tell her mother, who is here in 

the circle, Mrs, , that she is so glad that her little pets 

have been taken care of since she passed to this side. Now 
is not that natural ? Does it not show how little this child 
has changed .'' And I want to say to you all, love animals 
that are about you and treat them kindly. God wishes it — 
the spirit world wishes it. That man who is kind to his 
animals will be apt to have kind animals. An ugly tempered 
man will be apt to have ugly tempered animals. Animals 
do not cease with their earth existence. When will you 
know that the universe is unlimited and eternal, and that the 
spirit universe and the physical universe are not two separate 
universes .-* Think what that means. Ye slow-witted men, 
how often must this simplest of truths be told you ? And 
yet you think nothing can be true that you can not think 
around and through and understand altogether, 

" There is also a woman in this circle who has an invalid 

child, whose physical and mental development had been 

arrested for years. I wish to say to that mother, your love 

to that child, who is so devoted to you, illus- 

Supreme trates that God's love to us is not because we 

help Him, but because we need Him, and He 
Supreme ^ 

Helpfulness, helps us ; and the best that He asks of us is 
that we should be willing to let Him help us 
by His providence and His grace. He is glorified not by 
rising above Himself, but by condescension, and the anthem 
* Glory to God in the Highest ' was heard on earth when the 
Eternal One descended to our humanity and dwelt with the 
Holy Child at Bethlehem. And as we in our poor way repeat 
that condescension we have God's love and show it, and as 



GOD CHIEFEST OF SERVANTS 139 

we befriend and help those who need our care and love we 

grow to new wisdom and excellency — we grow spiritually. 

You say that you would go to the lowest pit of hell if your 

child were there. Ah, that is divine love ! He comes down 

and abides with us even when we make our bed in hell. 

God is helpfulness. Never forget, He never gives up the 

effort to bring back lost sheep — leaving the ninety and nine 

in His efforts for the wandering one. Let us now pray: 

O Father, open wide Thy gates for the dear ones who have gone 

before. Grant that they may come and bless 

their friends in this circle with sweet commu- ^^® 

Prayer of a 
nion. O Father, teach us charity, love for all spirit 

Thy works everywhere. And grant us to know 

the spirit of sacrifice that was revealed in Christ Jesus. 

May all the churches be blest by Thy holy spirit, that they 

may learn to know the height and depth and breadth of the 

communion of saints on both sides of the grave. Open 

more and more widely to the people of earth the floodgates 

of the knowledge of the spirit world. 

" Clergymen, why will you not accept us as coworkers 

with you, and make of Spiritualism a tool in your earthly 

carpenter- shop ? It will prove your chief tool. Why are you 

content to get your religious knowledge on hearsay.? Your 

knowledge is retrospective, hearsay, tradition some thousands 

of years old. In olden times people were 

wiser. They had direct communication with -^^ Appeal 

the spirit world. You take their word for it, ^ . . . 
^ ^ Inspiration 

instead of having experience at first hand. Direct. 
We /£"// you what they heard. All truth car- 
ries with it its own proof. Open your soul and wisdom will 
justify itself to-day and in your own experience. The uni- 
verse is a vast whispering gallery. You have ears, but you 
hear not. Even now, after a score of centuries of Christian- 
ity, you are involved in enormous errors as to what Jesus and 
His apostles taught you. You are ashamed of the ignorance 
and superstition of Christians of five centuries back. Chris- 



I40 STRANGE SHAKESPEARIAN NEWS 

tians live centuries hence will be as much ashamed of you. 
At the best you are like men lost in a strange country cov- 
ered with Egyptian darkness, with now and then a flash of 
lightning which serves little better than to let you know how 
dense is the darkness and which gives you a glimpse of the 
road out. Those flashes of lightning come from above. Lis- 
ten to us and you will have broad daylight all the time, and 
then your progress will be rapid. 

" We do not claim infallibility — we also are learners, but 
we know far more than you on earth know, as those above 

us knovvT far more than we. It is God's way 

The Higher ^ 

Spheres ^^^^ ^^^ higher spheres be the schoolmasters 

the School- of the lower. We grow by helping. Sacri- 

masters fj^g jg ^[ig way. That is what Jesus meant 

when He said, * I am the way,' and that was 

what He meant when He put stress on fasting and prayer. 

There is no merit in self-denial of itself, but to fast and pray 

takes the mind from self. You love praise from one another, 

and that is dishonesty, for you take what does not belong 

to you. Let in the spirit of truth and you will know that a 

vain man is a dishonest man. You follow will-o'-the-wisps, 

and yet you say spirit communication is a will-o'-the-wisp. 

This will-o'-the-wisp will turn to be a star that will shine 

forever. I say you are dishonest, for you claim credit for 

what is not yours. Listen to me : Who was the Shakespeare 

you knew and idolize.? He was not the man Shakespeare, 

but a band of spirits who through this man communicated 

with the earth. This band was back of the consciousness of 

Shakespeare. He did not know the source of his inspiration. 

He believed all came from his own mind. You wonder 

when the spirit of Shakespeare now speaks through some 

medium that his utterances are inferior. You now, if the 

medium is well developed, hear Shakespeare as he is; you 

then heard, when he wrote on earth, Shakespeare as the 

Shakespearian band of spirits was." 

This was startling ; for a few moments it looked as if it 



CHURCHES' GREATEST ALLY 141 

might prove too much for the faith of even some of the 
"rock-ribbed believers " in the circle. Yet they stood it. 
It was surely an astounding bit of information. In spite of 
its solemn import to the reputation of my favorite among 
poets, the thought of the tremendous possibilities of a theory 
of this sort, if applied to other of our great ones, diverted 
me not a little ; but quieting myself, I said to the control, 
" Do you not think that this explanation will be ridiculed by 
the public as a convenient cloak for fraud ? " " Quite likely," 
he quietly replied, " but that will not change the fact. The 
explanation that Jesus on occasions could do no mighty works 
because of the unbelief of the people is to this day ridiculed 
by some, and by others made to cover fraud ; and yet it was 
a true explanation. You hear with your ears and the lower 
part of your brains ; spiritual truths are spiritually discerned. 

" Let people know that they will survive the shock of death, 
and you will add immensely to the dignity of life. Let this 
be a step with them from belief to knowledge, 
and hope will have a thousandfold more power Faith in the 
to lift the world. Nothing so dwarfs the spiri- .™. i^^"t -f^ 
tual nature and hinders progress as materialism, i^g Power. 
It were better for a soul to believe that he is 
a spirit who has been sentenced by some superior spirit power 
to do hard labor in a prison-house of flesh and bone for three 
score years, and to grow restless and beat his hands against 
his prison bars, than to settle to the conviction that this is 
the beginning and the end. That man among you who can 
get the world to believe that spirit communication is a fact 
demonstrating individuality and immortality will do for the 
earth more than has ever been done by any man save Jesus 
Christ. He will place free institutions on an immutable 
basis and lift the roof from the world's temple. The barest 
chance that Spiritualism is true should profoundly interest 
every intelligent man on your side of life. 

" Do you not know, Avill not the Church understand, that 
this will make credible the strange birth and the resurrection 



142 PEDANTRY VERSUS KNOWLEDGE 

of Jesus Christ ? If your dead can materialize and walk on 

earth, why is it strange that an exalted being like Jesus 

should materialize and walk on earth for 

Christ a thirty-three years and come back again after 
Materialized •' •' ° 

Spirit. ^^ ^^^ entered the grave? The Church 

should regard Spiritualism as its greatest ally. 

" The Church must unlearn much of what she has learned. 
Why should this make her hesitate.? Neither is the Church 
infallible. She does not claim to be — at least the Protestant 
Church does not so claim — but when told that she is not by 
the spiritual world she bitterly resents it. Your dogmas are 
milestones in your religious progress. The Church too often 
mistakes theologic pedantry for spiritual knowledge. Knowl- 
edge of the mechanics of music does not measure the growth 
of the music soul. Said the Master : ' Except your righteous- 
ness shall exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees you 
can not enter into the kingdom of heaven. ' Why .-* The 
inner kingdom is entered by the development of the spirit. 
Study well, friends, the full meaning of what I have just 
said. 

" The higher cycles do nothing carelessly nor foolishly. 

There is high purpose in their determination to bring their 

communication with you into the realm of 

The High your consciousness. It is not a matter of jest 

f th'^^^'^ ., nor to satisfy wonder, altho many of the lower 

World. spirits on both sides are so using it. This 
trifling will soon be overcome. The spirit 
world will be capitalizing itself in your thinking. The audi- 
ble communication once heard by the world's best men will 
be heard again. Then there will be prophets and apostles in 
your pulpits, and then there will be no complaints of empty 
churches. This will be a visible and audible demonstration 
that the kingdom of heaven zs at hand, as it was when Jesus 
and the angels at Bethlehem broke through, and when Moses 
and Elijah appeared. 

" These truths we know that you will accept only by iter- 



ENLARGING SELF-RESPECT 143 

ation and reiteration. By making spiritual truths part of 
your thinking you will grow to them. Facts demand expla- 
nation of scientists, and scientists too will enlarge their ideas 
of nature and its laws so as to take in these facts. 

" All this will immensely enlarge man's self-respect, not 
his pride nor vanity, for he will know that this is not his 
doing, but is of the infinite essence of all knowledge, and 
goodness, and life— what you will call God. Give a man the 
certain consciousness that there is such a God and that this 
God is with him and in him, then the dream to him of a 
billionaire will be a triviality. It will prove that personality 
continues ; that space and time are nothing to spirit ; as one 
of your own philosophers said : ' It is all the same whether 
the distance be an inch or a billion of Uranus's orbits.' This 
is not altogether true, not in the lower cycles, but there is 
much truth in it. Life is the only truth, all else is corollary, 
or, rather, shadow. Take heed how you hear. We are not 
permitted to tell you many of the higher truths, for until 
you have that in your development that answers to them, you 
misunderstand them, and they work injury. 

" What is life .-' The life germ of an egg, of a grain of 

wheat — what is it.'* The life germ of the body — what is it.-* 

The grain of wheat lies in the ground in a 

^ . , The 

sealed vessel for centuries. Plant it, and it Crystallizing 

produces new bodies after its kind. Each has Power in 
in it the organizing and crystallizing princi- Materaliza- 
ples of its own body. Yes, but what is the 
life principle or power .'' Who can tell.-' This crystallizing 
principle does not perish with the grain. This you see and 
believe; why may not the human body also have these prin- 
ciples .'' It has. It has the spiritual body that crystallizes into 
form after the earthly body ceases. This may be controlled 
by us through the force of will, and some of us can and do at 
times crystallize into earthly bodies, each like unto himself, 
and reappear in materialized forms on earth. Jesus was only 
\k\e. first fruits of this resurrection." 



144 JOSEPH PARKER'S FAITH 

On one occasion I put the following question to a spirit 
control : 

Question : " Does anything exist in the universe except 
mind, God ? " 

Answer : " Yes ; no. I can not answer you more defi- 
nitely. That is a mystery we ourselves have not fathomed, 
nor can I tell you what we know. Nor is it altogether well 
to trouble yourselves by thoughts so far above your reach. 
Why should a schoolboy struggling with the multiplication 
table bother with the value of logarithms or calculus .'' Suf- 
ficient each problem until the time we reach it. Then we 
shall have that within us that answers to it and interprets it. 

" But first of all we wish you to get this practical thought, 

to fix it fully in your mind, have it as a certain belief, that you 

are surrounded by those who have passed on 

Surrounded — folks, not etherealized, shadowy folks, you 

■■ur Z-f" J know not what — but your folks, looking at 
Multitude . -^ . 

of Witnesses, you, seeking to help you; then you will find 
it easy in the midst of temptations to keep 
your poise. This gives the undisturbed, quiet courage of 
the soul that nothing can break. A man who really believes 
that angel eyes are upon him — that is, that the dead are 
around him and his secrets open to their eyes — is most apt to 
regard his life on earth with solemnity and circumspection, 
which otherwise would be impossible." 

That many eminent clergymen who are not regarded as 
Spiritualists believe that they receive spiritual counsel from 
their dead, the following two incidents illustrate : Joseph 
Parker, the famous London preacher recently dead, said that 
he prayed every day to his wife after she had passed from 
earth. He declared that he never came into his pulpit to 
preach without requesting her to come with him. And 
again he said : " I encourage a friend of mine whose wife 
has departed to pray to her and to pray to God to ask her to 
come to his help. She will be more to him than twelve 
legions of unknown angels," And General Booth, of the 



LIFT THE FLOODGATES 145 

Salvation Army, in The War Cry, November 27, 1897, under 
" Communion with the Departed," writes the following : 

" Through all my history, my personal intercourse with the spirit- 
world has been but limited. I have not been favored with many visions, 
and it is but seldom that I dream dreams that impart either pleasure or 
profit; and yet I have a spiritual communion with the departed "aints 
that is not without both satisfaction and service. And especially of late 
the memories of those with whom my heart has had the choicest commu- 
nion in the past, if not the very beings themselves, have come in upon 
me as I have sat at ray desk or lain wakeful on my bed in the night- 
season. Among these, one form, true to her mission, comes more fre- 
quently than all besides, assuring me of her continued partnership in my 
struggle for the temporal and eternal salvation of the multitudes — and 
that is my blessed, my beautiful wife !" 

It is easy to believe that the conscious presence of our 
friends who have passed into the beyond, the conscious pres- 
ence of another world, would strike through and through 
with added importance the present life, lifting it as the world 
is lifted by the attraction of a near planet. However great 
our faith in the presence of the spirit world, there is some- 
thing startling in the thought that the dead hold communion 
with us. This is knowing that there is no death, that the 
separation of the body from the spirit or the spirit from the 
body is a birth, not a funeral. It is easy to understand that 
a preacher realizing this fully, and believing that he is in 
communication with intelligences in the inner world, be- 
comes a voice, not an echo, speaking as a messenger, an am- 
bassador, as one having authority. In a Spiritualist church 
in Brooklyn there is this motto over the pulpit, " The Fra- 
ternity of Soul Communion." 

I have heard these strange intelligences from the cabinets 
urge a hundred times their ability immensely to help human- 
ity beyond what they are now helping it if we would believe 
and permit. Said one : 

" Lift the floodgates and you will make an advance in 

knowledge such as you have never known. As you have 

often heard from this side, there has never been a great 
10 



146 OUR ELDER BROTHER 

intellectual forward movement, never a reform, never an ad- 
vance, but that the thought of it had its origin on the spirit 
side and was impinged upon the brain of some 
Urgent mortal. Open now communication so that we 

ppea or ^^^ transfer our thoughts to your plane more 
Intercom- _ ° ■^ ^ 

munication. easily, then will there be immensely greater 

progress; the ocean of knowledge in our 
world and the ocean of knowledge in your world will inter- 
flow until they reach as nearly as may be a common level. 
Organize to study seriously how to get help from the spirit 
world and then judge of the results. A tree is known by its 
fruits. 

" The time has come that the spirit world should become 
your foster-mother — nay, rather your elder brother who has 
reached a higher level and yearns to help your world up from 
its sorrow and ignorance. Through the stance-room the two 
worlds are brought within credible speaking distance with 
each other, but these seance-rooms should be immensely 
multiplied and purified — multiplied only after they are puri- 
fied. Now they work blunderingly and do much harm. It 
is appalling to us, your lack of interest in this work; all the 
improvements of the past centuries combined do not equal 
this one in possible value. 

" It is thought by some that the spirit world has made in 
advance a world of things for your use — inventions, philos- 
ophies, religions, poems, orations ; and have them in a kind 
of cold storage, to be shipped to you as the market is ready 
for them. Instead, all truths and systems of truths are free 
in the inner universe, and come into your world whenever 
and wherever there is an opening. Do not forget that we 
are your brothers, folks like you are. When we passed from 
you we left behind only the shell of ourselves, the outer form, 
hindrances to progress, of value of course and necessary, 
but now we grow more rapidly and see more clearly." 

It will be remembered that the preceding control told us 
that there were many higher truths they were not permitted 



CRUMBS OF CONSISTENCY 147 

to tell us, because in our present imperfect development they 
would work us harm. Now here we seem to be told that if 
we consent to open communication nothing will be kept back. 
Dr. Holmes tells us, in his "Autocrat of the Breakfast- 
Table," that he objected vigorously against the obtrusion of 
a fact in contradiction to something he was saying ; not that 
he objected to facts — he liked facts ; but because he believed 
bread to be good, is no reason why, he said, he should per- 
mit a crumb to be blown down his throat and strangle him. 
Possibly these controls would say the same should we ven- 
ture to intrude in their talks any references to crumbs of 
consistency. 

Question from one in the circle : " Spirit Control, can 
you not make it clear to us why a medium and a cabinet are 
necessary .'' If your world is desirous to commune with clergy- 
men in this world, why do you not come to each direct.'' " 

Answer : " Why does steel go to the magnetized iron, and 

not to a piece of granite ? Answer me, if you can tell me, 

why in crystallization one atom moves to this 

place and another to that .-* These laws have why 

T-, , , Mediiims are 

many variations. Do you not observe how Necessary 

some men attract you and others repel you .-• 

Freed from your present coarse bodies, you will discover that 

this law of repulsion and attraction is almost irresistible. It 

is this law that helps make a spirit inviolable. Every soul 

produces vibrations that protect it from foreign influences, 

we may call them spirit or thought waves. They are more 

than those words describe. Here also you will have to 

think my meaning. What makes one a medium to us is 

that she sends out vibrations of a kind that do not repel us. 

These vibrations are not necessarily from her high moral or 

spiritual nature. Many elements go to make them. 

" There is a light that goes out from human beings more 

subtle than the physical. I can detect it. It can be seen 

by the eye of the inner or so-called spirit body. I can see 

it because I am in this spirit body, and I can use it. This 



148 MEDIUMS BORN, NOT MADE 

light streams from the solar plexus or center of the nervous 
system of the medium. I can now see it streaming from 
this medium. Will you step up.? I think that it is so 
strong now that you can see it." 

I stepped to the cabinet and saw a glow of light where 
the medium seemed to be sitting. It was too dark to tell 
whether it was the medium or whether the light was not a 
bit of phosphorus. I said : 

" Professor Goodspeed, of Philadelphia, has just an- 
nounced that he can take ;ir-ray pictures from an invisible 
light that is imparted by his hand — is this the same light of 
which you are speaking.? " To this the control replied, 

" It must be if the report you speak of be true. But 
I think that he is in error. I do not think that a suffi- 
cient amount of light comes from the hand of any one to 
enable him to take a photograph. It comes much more 
freely from the solar plexus. At any rate, he will find that 
if the camera will be situated so as to catch the rays that 
come from the solar plexus of a mediumistic person, he will 
get a much more complete picture. 

" You do not understand why a medium is necessary. 
You ring up one on the telephone, but what if the girl in 
charge is not present and the switchboard is not arranged 
and connection made.' You may call ever so loudly and 
you get no response. The medium is the * hello-girl, ' as you 
call her, between the two worlds, absolutely necessary for 
making communication possible. She makes connection be- 
tween you and your friends. It depends not on the loudness 
of your talk, or your desire, or the importance of your mes- 
sage, but upon connection being made." 

The control said much more on this point, much that 
must have proved somewhat discouraging to several beginners 
in the circle, who had been telling me that they intended to 
develop mediumship. According to this control, mediums 
are born, not made — like Victor Hugo's idea of poets in 
his reply to the remark, " It must be very difficult to write 



IT WAS NOT I 



149 



good poetry," "No, sir," was the vigorous reply; "it is 
either very easy or utterly impossible." As has been said of 
prophets, it seems that God when He makes the medium 
does not unmake the man. The control ended his talk as 
follows : 

" In thinking out what I have told you, this further 
thought may help you : The man nature is made up of soul, 
spirit, and body. The soul is the essence, never seen even 
by ourselves. With physical eyes you can see only the 
material. With our eyes we can see the spirit body, but we 
can no more see the soul than you can now 
see the spirit. Soul is as mysterious to us as ^°^ *^® ^°^^ 
the spirit is to you. God is the essence of the irniverse 
universe, the soul of the universe, the same as 
your soul is the essence of the body. The physical universe 
is the physical expression of God, as your body is your 
physical expression. The atoms of light do not crowd out 
the atoms of glass ; they intersperse it. Another world in- 
tersperses this world as the soul intersperses the body, as 
light intersperses and illuminates glass." 

The following supplies a very curious comment on this 
explanation of mediumship and adds not a little to the com- 
plication. I take it from my notebook, having been at both 
sittings. 

George Carroll, it will be remembered, is one of the princi- 
pal controls at the circle which discovered the Widow's Mite. 
By several members of the circle it was be- 
lieved that George had appeared at a seance in Spirit 
■NT tr 1 1 TOT TT- Contradicts 
New York the precedmg Sunday. His mate- Spirit. 

rialization there was spoken of by Mr. R. as 
very fine. When George was talking this Wednesday eve- 
ning he was asked by Mr. R. some questions about his ap- 
pearance on the previous Sunday, and was thanked for what 
he there said; but to Mr. R.'s astonishment he replied, "I 
was not present." 

" But you materalized," said Mr. R. 



I50 INVIOLABILITY OF THE EGO 

"But I did not, for I was not present." 

" Why, George, there was a form there that said it was 
you, and he told me some things that were important. " 

" But I tell you it was not I." 

" Who was it ? " 

" You must not believe everything you see. " 

" Do you mean, George, that that form was the medium's ? " 

"All I say is, do not believe everything you see." 

" But, George, the medium was tied and could not free 
herself easily." 

" So you think ; but don't trust to tying. There are some 
things about mediumship that you do not yet understand, and 
it is difficult for me to make you understand. I can't explain 
all to you for two reasons. First, I do not know all. Sec- 
ond, I am not permitted to cross certain lines. Within cer- 
tain limits mortals must protect themselves." 

" But if spirits are permitted to come and deceive us, may 
they not work us great harm .'' They already move chairs, 
tables, and make things disappear. If they can do this, what 
would prevail if they were permitted to do greater things ? 
They are not subject to our laws. They would produce 
chaos." 

" You need not fear. Spirits are not permitted to inter- 
fere with you beyond giving you some phenomena. You are 
protected absolutely. The moving of tables, chairs, etc, is 
permitted only when it is necessary to do this to give proof 
of another world." 

" But what is our protection if spirits are permitted to 
represent themselves to be those whom they are not.'' How 
can we tell.? How do we know that you are you.? May 
we not be deceived } " 

" Well, you will have to learn." 

" Why do not the greater spirits combine and protect me- 
diums against wicked and deceiving spirits ? " 

" Why do not the greater ones among yourselves combine 
and keep away wicked and deceiving people from circles ? " 



MEDIUM A DYNAMO 151 

The above would seem to tell against Dr. Hudson's theory 
that the subjective mind in trance or hypnotic condition is 
the source of these intelligences, as he says 
that the hypnotic condition will not endure '^^® 

argument or contradiction. Argue, he tells ^M^^d^^ 
us, with a person in trance, and he will not Discusses, 
hear or will immediately come out of the 
trance. This has not been my experience, and I have had 
frequent discussions with these trance intelligences. 

We had this further talk on mediumship : 

Question : " Why is it necessary for a medium to go into 
a trance state to come into touch with the spirit world.? " 

Answer : " It is not necessary in all cases and in the 
future it will become less necessary, every year less and less. 
The soul must be acquiescent. That is the 
meaning of faith. Belief is essential now, as Is Trance Con- 
it was in the days of the New Testament, uecessarv? 
This subjective condition of the soul is easier 
attained in the trance condition. But the medium is some- 
thing more than a negative force. She is a dynamo to us of 
psychic force. We must have a battery. We call it by that 
name, as you will understand it better. A portion of this 
battery is supplied from your side and part from ours. 

" Let me tell you again what you have often heard. The 
spirit world is seeking recognition, not to gratify curiosity or 
to please the wonder imagination of men, but to start a new 
life in man, that is, quicken into life his spiritual powers 
and natures. God has made man so that he can not find 
peace until he is in harmony with himself and with truth — 
that is, with God. The spirit world is starting a fire on 
earth that will not be quenched until this life is made anew. 
This is not another or different work from what Christ re- 
vealed. It is the same work quickened and enlarged, and 
the influence that sent Christ to earth is behind it. The 
higher spirit world is in harmony in this work. Clergymen, 
of all men, should learn to measure things aright. Good- 



152 TRUE RELIGION 

ness is greatness. He who loves most is greatest, for love is 
giving self for another, as a mother gives herself for her 
child, which is the most Godlike thing on earth. Jesus 
might also have said, except your heart becomes as a mother 
heart, you can not know God. 

" I apply a thought you mentioned here the other eve- 
ning : In the spirit world we know only that up to which we 
have developed. How would you explain to a brutal man the 
beauty of a picture .-* As easily explain to a goose the value 
of a diamond. The goose after your explanation would for- 
get all you have said at the sight of a grain of corn. Accus- 
tom yourself to think of the soul as independ- 
The Unreality ^^^ ^f ^^^ ^^^ jj^^ ^^^ j. ^^^ ^.g^j 

of Earthly ,r ^r -.-r • . ■ ■ ■ 

Life. ^^^*- Your life is unreal; in a sense, it is a 

deception. You kiss one another while your 
souls are repellent. No soul can be kissed except through 
sympathy. Get into the spirit of truth and reveal yourselves 
to your fellows. Then you will see to it that your lives are 
torches in the darkness of this world. There is great sweat 
and worry and waste of energy on earth, and in the end you 
have nothing. Spiritualism has in it the millennial age; 
it is the prophecy of that age and its occasion. Culti- 
vate your spirit life and you will find it to be that which 
makes of life a day that grows brighter as it approaches sun- 
set, and your sunset will be as the sinking of a star in the 
West to rise on another world. Religion — what is it.-* As 
one of your writers has said, this word as used by Cicero and 
other Latin writers, was not derived from relegere, to bind 
back, as some following Lactantius have asserted, but from. 
religare, to think or ponder deeply. 

" The truth is not attained by less thinking, but by more 
thought. But there is a higher method of reasoning than 
any Aristotle taught you. What is more reasonable, if God 
is infinite in goodness and reason and power, than that we 
make complete surrender of self to Him.? To make this 
surrender is the supreme test of reasonableness. Conceit 



JESUS IS CHIEFEST 153 

is falsehood. A chief danger of your age is the loss of 
the consciousness of sin and dependence upon the higher 
cycles and upon God. Supreme fulness is through supreme 
emptiness. Jesus is chiefest, but is chiefest in dependence 
on the Father. To feel thus dependent is simply a recogni- 
tion of truth, and it is the spirit of truth that is to rule. 

" I tell you, friends, spirit truths are to be found not so 
much in psychic research societies, as upon your knees in 
your closets. An humble one has an open doorway to the 
heart and mind of God. You call this preaching ; I am not 
preaching. I am telling you the A B C of truth. I am 
a fingerboard to the way upward, the way of life. These are 
the foundations to build on, the hope of the world. How 
will you lift your wretched and poor except you kindle in 
them hope ? Give your depressed ones this hope through a 
vision of the majesty and glory and importance of the spirit 
world and the certainty of its presence, and you will have 
rolled the stone from the mouth of the sepulcher. It is resur- 
rection and life to the world. Here are joy and growth and 
riches, more real than anything on earth. O ye fools and 
slow of heart to believe the truths that we iterate and reite- 
rate to you ! In these truths there is nothing denominational 
or racial or provincial — no more than the sun or air is limited 
by geographical boundary lines. These are universal truth." 

Every now and then in these spirit circles I have heard 
superior intelligences talk, as in the above conversation, in- 
telligences who seemed profoundly religious, 
full of reverence and a profound sense of re- Some Spirits 
sponsibility ; but the reader must not imagine _ _ ,. 
that this is usual. In my experience this man- Religious, 
ner of talk is the exception. There is gold 
in the mass of these communications, but you have to crush 
the quartz very fine and run through much water to get the 
golden grains ; but that there is more than a little gold there 
is certain. From whence does this gold come ? It is claimed 



154 FREDERIC MYERS' TESTIMONY 

that it comes from another kingdom, the spirit realm. 
"Prove that," I again say to Spiritualists, "and you have 
proved something that is of immeasurable worth. " 
Frederic Myers says ' : 

" The high moral quality of these automatic communications is a 
phenomenon worth consideration. I must indeed confess myself unable 
to explain why it is that beneath the frequent incoherence, frequent com- 
monplaces, frequent pomposity of these messages, there should always 
be a substratum of better sense, of truer Catholicity, than is usually to 
be heard, except from the leading minds of the generation. The almost 
universally high moral tone of genuinely automatic utterances — whether 
claimed as spirit communications or proceeding obviously from the au- 
tomatist himself — has not, I think, been sufficiently noticed or adequately 
explained." 

It is worthy of note that at these various circles I never 
have heard an obscene, immoral, or profane word. This is 
a factor in this problem that should carry some weight. 

My experience in these investigations has left upon the 
whole a pleasant taste in my memory, I have had given me 
much nonsense, much that was disappointing, much repug- 
nant; but I say, upon the whole, What a delightful world is 
the spirit world if these are spirits ! Thinking myself into 
this belief, I can easily see how one thus believing may not 
have the least repugnance to death, and would enter with 
gladness the other world. 

' "Human Personality," vol. ii., p. 133. 



PART II 



THE FINDING OF 



-THE WIDOW'S MITE," 

AND 

SIMILAR PSYCHIC PHENOMENA 

The Views of Leading Psychologists 



ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, the eminent scientist who 
divides with Darwin the honor of the discovery of evolution, 
replied in «< Light," London, January i6, 1904, to the ques- 
tion whether it is true that he had recanted his published 
belief in the spirit hypothesis as explaining much of psychic 
phenomena : 

<<Dear Sir: The statement to which you refer is abso- 
lutely and entirely false (and it is equally so as regards my 
friend Sir William Crookes). I have several times had to 
deny it. I have arranged for a new issue of my book 
[« Miracles and Modern Spiritualism']. I adhere to every 
statement in the book. 

"Yours truly, ALFRED R. WALLACE." 



SIR WILLIAM CROOKES, in his President's Address be- 
fore the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 
in 1898, said : 

" No incident in my scientific career is more widely known 
than the part I took many years ago in certain psychic re- 
searches. Thirty years have passed since I published an ac- 
count of experiments tending to show that outside our scientific 
knowledge there exists a Force exercised by intelligence differ- 
ing from the ordinary intelligence common to mortals. This 
fact in my life is, of course, well understood by those who 
honored me with the invitation to become your president. 
Perhaps among my audience some may feel curious as to 
whether I shall speak out or be silent. I elect to speak, 
altho briefly. To ignore the subject would be an act of 
cowardice — an act of cowardice I fee) no temptation to commit. 
I have nothing to retract. I adhere to my already published 
statements. Indeed, I might add much thereto." 



THE FINDING OF ''THE WIDOW'S MITE," 
AND SIMILAR PHENOMENA 



Detailed History of the Incident — Affidavits — Opinions of Forty Psy- 
chologists in Universities throughout the World — Was this Beecher's 
Face?— Similar Psychic Phenomena: Swedenborg, through " Spirit 
Aid," Finds a Receipt — Finding a Will and a Promissory Note — 
Minot J. Savage directed by the Spirit of his Dead Son to Certain 
Papers — Prof. William James Tells of the Finding of the Bankbook 
by his Mother-in-law, through Mrs. Piper — Other Phenomena. 



1 

THE INCIDENT 

In the early part of February, 1903, having heard of a 
woman in Brooklyn who every Wednesday evening gave 
spiritualistic " sittings " to her family and a few invited 
guests, I requested a mutual friend of the family and myself, 
Mr. Irving S. Roney, a gentleman who has long been in the 
employment of Funk & Wagnalls Company and who has the 
confidence of us all, to secure for me an invitation to attend 
several of these meetings. I found the family plain, intelli 
gent folks, in humble circumstances ; the medium a delicate 
lady of sixty-eight years, of little school education, refined 
in manners. The family is composed of this lady, a son of 
thirty-five years of age, and a brother of fifty- eight years. 
The woman is a widow, and the brother a widower whose 
three children died many years ago. The controls report 
themselves to be three in number : a daughter of this brother 
by the name of Mamie, who died at the age of seven, and a 
friend of one in the circle by the name of George Carroll, and 
a son of the medium by the name of Amos. 

157 



158 MANY "SPIRIT" VOICES 

The sittings are a kind of prayer- meeting, a weekly 
reunion of the family, "living and dead," and have so been 
held, I am told, every Wednesday for over four years. No 
charge of any sort whatever is made, nor is there any collec- 
tion taken. The communications are believed to be by direct 
or independent speech and by raps, with lights occasionally 
appearing on the curtains. The medium says that she knows 
nothing whatever of what takes place during the sittings, 
being lost in trance. The voices are of a great variety ; I 
counted in a single evening as many as twenty — some appar- 
ently the voices of children, and others of middle-aged per- 
sons and of old men and women ; a few of these are the voices 
of Indians, and one of a jolly, typical, Virginian negro. 
Each voice maintains its individuality during the evening 
and from one evening to another. Listening very closely, I 
was never able to detect any confusion of the voices, except 
on one occasion in the voices of Mamie and the negro, Aunt 
Eliza. When attention was drawn to this. Aunt Eliza ex- 
plained that she and Mamie were much of the time together, 
and that she sometimes fell into the habit of talking " like 
them folks I like." This explanation fitted in with the 
theory that I was inclined to adopt from the first, that the 
mediumship in this circle was an excellent case of secondary 
personality, not of spirit control. The brother and son of the 
medium were always at the circle and in sight, so that there 
was no collusion possible on the part of any of these mem- 
bers of the family. 

The medium at these sittings sat behind a curtain in the 
dark. A dim light in a corner of the room in which we sat, 
controlled from the cabinet, made objects about us faintly 
visible — by it with a little straining of my eyes I could 
tell the time by my watch. The bedroom in which sat 
the medium opened into the kitchen. The conditions were 
not at all of a test kind. It was all " upon honor. " After 
considerable investigation, however, and fuller acquaintance 
with the family, I am morally certain that this confidence in 



THE BEECHER INQUIRY 159 

the integrity of the medium and family at the time of this 
mite incident was not misplaced. The greater part of the 
communications claim to come from departed members of the 
family, especially to the brother; this brother is a man of 
hard common sense who seems much affected by the commu- 
nications, especially those purporting to come from his little 
seven-year- old daughter and from his deceased wife. In ad- 
dition to the above facts, the absence of any apparent advan- 
tage to the medium or her family that would come from any 
trick, as no effort, up to the time of my visit, was made to 
secure sitters and no money directly or indirectly given, 
make it hard to think that there is any intended deception. 

The conclusion that this mediumship was a remarkably 
good case of secondary personality was almost fixed in my 
mind, up to the time that I had the singular experience which 
I give below. 

On my third visit I was quite tired, and sat rather quietly 
during the entire evening listening to the talk between the 
cabinet and the sitters — of the sitters there were fewer than 
a dozen. About eleven o'clock the control named " George," 
in his usual strong masculine voice, abruptly asked : " Has 
any one here got anything that belonged to Mr. Beecher .'' " 
There was no reply. On his emphatic repetition of the ques- 
tion, I replied, being the only one present, as I felt sure, 
who had ever had any immediate acquaintance with Mr. 
Beecher : " I have in my pocket a letter from Rev. Dr. Hillis, 
Mr. Beecher's successor. Is that what you mean.? " 

The answer was : " No ; I am told by a spirit present, 
John Rakestraw, that Mr. Beecher, who is not present, is con- 
cerned about an ancient coin, * The Widow's Mite.' This 
coin is out of its place, and should be returned. It has long 
been away, and Mr. Beecher wishes it returned, and he looks 
\.o you, doctor, to return it." 

I was considerably surprised, and asked : " What do you 
mean by saying that he looks to me to return it ? I have no 
coin of Mr. Beecher's ! " 



i6o "IN A SAFE" 

"I don't know anything about it except that I am told 
that this coin is out of its place, and has been for a number 
of years, and that Mr. Beecher says you can find it and can 
return it." 

I remembered then that when we were making "The 
Standard Dictionary," some nine years before, I had borrowed 
from a gentleman in Brooklyn — a close friend of Mr. 
Beecher's, who died several years ago — a valuable ancient coin 
known as "The Widow's Mite." He told me that this coin 
was worth some hundreds of dollars, and, under promise that 
I would see that it was returned to the collection where it 
belonged, he would loan it to me. Altho a member of Dr. 
Richard S. Storrs's church, this gentleman remained a con- 
spicuous friend of Mr. Beecher all through the famous trial 
which so severely tested the loyalty of many of Mr. Beecher's 
friends. 

I said to the control, " The only ' Widow's Mite ' that has 
ever been in my charge was one that I borrowed some years 
ago from a gentleman in Brooklyn ; this I promptly returned " ; 
to which the control replied : 

"This one has not been returned." And then, after a 
moment's silence, he said : " Do you know whether there is 
a large iron safe in Plymouth Church ? " 

I answered : " I do not." 

He said : " I am impressed that this coin is in a large 
iron safe, that it has been lost sight of ; it is in a drawer in 
this safe under a lot of papers, and that you can find it, and 
Mr. Beecher wishes you to find it." 

I said : " Do you mean that this safe is in Plymouth 
Church ? " 

He said : " I don't know where it is. I am simply im- 
pressed that it is in a large iron safe in a drawer under a lot 
of papers, and has been lost sight of for years, and that you 
can find it, and Mr. Beecher wishes you to find it. That is 
all that I can tell you." 

The next day when I went to New York I thought over 



THOUGHT COIN RETURNED i6i 

this curious communication about " The Widow's Mite." 
I was certain the coin had been returned, but the insistent 
statement that it had not been returned and the curious fact 
that such an unusual piece of money should have been so 
positively mentioned, all impressed me very strongly. Dur- 
ing the day my brother, who had been the business manager 
of "The Standard Dictionary," called at my editorial rooms. 
I asked him, without telling him anything of the incident of 
the night before, if he remembered "The Widow's Mite" 
which we had used in the illustration of the dictionary. He 
said that he did, and, in reply to my question as to what he 
had done with it, he replied : " I returned it." " To whom .-• " 
I asked. He said : " I don't know the man, but I returned it 
to the person from whom you said you had borrowed it." To 
my cross-examination he repeated again and again that he 
was certain that it had been returned. 

In the afternooon, at our business conference, Mr. Wag- 
nails, the vice-president of our company, and Mr. E. J. 
Wheeler, the editor of The Literary Digest, being present, I 
told them of my curious experience, Mr. Wagnalls said : 
" I never heard that you had borrowed such a coin. " Mr. 
Wheeler, who is particularly skeptical of " spirit communica- 
tions," playfully remarked : " Well, now find that coin, and it 
will be a good test." I said, half- jestingly, " All right " ; and, 
tapping the bell, called in the cashier and asked him : " Do 
you remember an old coin called ' The Widow's Mite ' which 
was in our possession during the making of the dictionary.^ " 
He replied that he did, that it was given to him by Mr. B. 
F. Funk, and he was under the impression that it had been 
returned to its owner. I asked : " Are you sure of this .'' " 
He said : " I believe it has been so returned. " I told him 
to go to the large iron safe (we have two safes in the cashier's 
office), and have his assistants help him see whether that 
coin was anywhere in the safe. In about twenty minutes 
one of his assistants came into the office, and handed me an 
envelope in which were two " Widow's Mites. " The en- 
II 



i62 FOUND AS INDICATED 

velope had been found in a little drawer in the large iron safe 
under a lot of papers, where it had lain forgotten for a num- 
ber of years. 

In examining the two coins and also the plate of illustra- 
tions in the dictionary, it was found that we had used for 
reproduction the smaller and lighter colored one. The other 
was much blacker. I concluded that the light one was the 
genuine widow's mite, for I remembered that we had sent 
both to the curator of the Philadelphia Mint, who was an 
expert on ancient coins, and had asked him kindly to let us 
know which of the two was genuine. I instructed Mr. B. F. 
Funk, the business manager of the Dictionary Department, 
to follow the information of this expert in making the coin- 
plate, and up to the time of this interview with the control 
I had thought that this instruction had been carried out. 
We determined at once to make further test of this curious 
intelligence by seeing whether the control could tell which of 
the two coins should be returned. So we agreed to keep the 
whole matter to ourselves, not telling even the cashier our 
reason for the inquiry. 

On the following Wednesday evening I attended this 
same Brooklyn circle. 

Toward the close of the stance " George " began talking. 
I said to him : " George, you remember the request you made 
of me last Wednesday evening .'* " 

He at once replied : " Yes, about the coin, the widow's 
mite.?" 

" There are two of them ; now, George, can you tell me 
which of the two is the right one.? " 

Without an instant's hesitation he answered : " The black 
one." 

I was certain that the lighter one was the correct coin, as 
that was the one we had used in the Dictionary, I asked 
him whether he was sure that it was the black one. His 
reply was instant : "Certainly." Then I asked whether he 
could tell me to whom it was to be returned. He said that 



so FAR BUT NO FARTHER 163 

he could not tell, but he thought it was to be returned to 
some place in Connecticut, but he did not know for sure. I 
asked him whether he could tell me from whom I had re- 
ceived it. He said that it belonged to some friend of Mr. 
Beecher's. I wished to know what friend, if he could not 
give me the name. He said that he could not, but that he 
was shown a picture of a college, that he did not know what 
this meant unless that this man had been connected with a 
large school. I said : 

"Where located.?" 

" In Brooklyn." 

" What part of Brooklyn .? " 

" On the Heights." 

" A gentlemen's school or a ladies* school ^ " 

" A ladies' school." 

This information about the owner of " The Widow's Mite " 
was all correct as far as it went, for the gentleman from 
whom I had got it was Prof. Charles E. West, who was, 
at the time that I had borrowed the coin and had been for 
many years, at the head of a ladies' high-school on the 
Brooklyn Heights, But the curious thing was that so much 
could be told of the details and yet the name of the owner 
of the coin could not be given, nor could I be told with any 
certainty where Mr. Beecher desired the coin to be sent. 
The answer to my repeated questions on these two points was 
at this sitting and two future sittings : " I can not tell you ; 
I do not know; for some reason Mr. Beecher does not tell." 

At a circle with another medium the following week, I 
asked these same two questions of Mr, Beecher, who was said 
to be present. I was told by the control that Mr. Beecher 
said that he was not concerned about the return of the coin ; 
what he was concerned about was to give me a test that 
would prove the certainty of communication between the 
two worlds, and since that has been accomplished in my find- 
ing the coin, he cared nothing further about it. In the con- 
versation at this second circle I had spoken of the finding of 



i64 REPORT FROM U. S. MINT 

a coin through another medium. This clew vitiated some- 
what the evidential value of this later interview as a test. 

After receiving the surprising answer from, the control, 
George, that it was " the black coin " which was the correct 
one, I sent both coins again to the Philadelphia mint, with- 
out giving them any indication or clew of what had taken 
place, simply requesting to know which of the two coins was 
the genuine " Widow's Mite." The reply that came back 

was as follows : 

Mint Service, 
Office of Superintendent, U. S. Mint, 
Philadelphia, Pa., March ii, 1903. 
Funk &" Wagnalls Coinpany^ 

30 Lafayette Place, New York. 
Gentlemen : Our best authority on Jewish coinage is the book by 
Frederic W. Madden, M.R.S.L., assistant in the Department of Coins 
and Medals, British Museum. He describes the larger of the two pieces 
as having a center knob, surrounded by six stars or lobes, in which is 
written in Jewish characters the name, when translated— y^/z^;Z(2//^a« 
Hanielik or King Jehonathan. The reverse contains the figure of an 
anchor. The time of this kind is given as that of Alexander Jannseus as 
105 B.C. to B.C. 78. 

The second and smaller piece is evidently a copy, made at a compara- 
tively recent date, of a coin representing a somewhat later date than the 
first piece, the obverse of which is iilled with Jewish characters represent- 
ing, when translated, "Jonathan the High Priest and the Confederation 
of the Jews," written within a wreath of laurel or olive. The reverse has 
two cornucopias and a poppy head with a dotted circle, and its time not 
later than 78 B.C. (Signed) Albert A. Norris, 

Acting Superintendent. 

It was the second and smaller coin that we had used by 
mistake in the dictionary ; the larger is the " black coin " and 
the one that we should have used, and which we have ordered 
on the above information to be substituted in the dictionary 
plate in the next edition. 

The envelope containing the two coins when found was 

sealed, and on it were written these words : 

Mr. Raymond : The widow's mite — please put in vault for safe- 
keeping. Value ^125. (Signed) B. F. 

This envelope contains two widow's mites— shekel, half shekel, and 
denarius. 



A STRONG AFFIDAVIT 165 

Nothing else was written on the envelope, but in the 
preface to the dictionary there is this statement, speaking 
of the illustrations : " The Widow's Mite (which was en- 
graved from an excellent original coin in the possession of 
Prof. Charles E. West of Brooklyn, N. Y.). " Unfortunately, 
few people read the preface to a dictionary. Mr. Roney and 
even Mr. Wagnalls can not remember to have ever read this 
statement in the preface. Mr, Roney was the only person 
besides myself in the circle who was likely to know of my 
connection with this "Widow's Mite." Mr. Roney is one 
of the most truthful men I have ever met — in my judgment 
incapable of falsehood or trick. I give his affidavit below, 
and add that Mr. Roney never has anything to do with the 
safes in the cashier's department, and that there is not the 
least likelihood that he could have known of the fact of this 
coin's presence in the safe — a fact unknown to myself and 
unremembered by the cashiers. No one is allowed access to 
these safes except the officers of the company and the cashiers. 

AFFIDAVIT OF IRVING S. RONEY 

I have read very carefully the above statement as to " The Widow's 
Mite," and declare that the conversation started with the abrupt question 
by the control, George, as described above, and that in all other points 
this description accords exactly with my memory of the incident. The 
discovery of the coin in the safe, of which I was not informed for some 
time afterward, was a complete surprise to me. When the control, 
George, put the question as to the whereabouts of " The Widow's Mite," 
I had no idea of its bearings, nor did I know the meaning of the conver- 
sation at the succeeding circle in reference to the coin until after the test 
in all of its details was completed, and Dr. Funk explained all to me. 

: "" ' : (Signed) Irving S. Roney. 

: N. Y. County : 



Sworn and subscribed to before me this 31st day of March, 1903. 
, — ■ — J (Signed) H. L. Raymond, Notary Public, 

j Seal \^ Westchester County. 

'^^ Certificate filed in New York County. 

The medium has sent me a most sweeping and solemn written state- 
ment that she knew nothing whatever of my connection with this coin, 
and that she had no knowledge that there ever existed in Brooklyn such 
a man as Professor West. See Appendix. 



i66 OTHER STATEMENTS 



STATEMENT OF OTHERS PRESENT AT THE CIRCLE 

We, the undersigned, declare that we were present at the first seance 
in which the incident described by Dr. Funk in the above narration took 
place. Up to the time of this seance we had never heard anything about 
this coin being used in any way by him or by his company, or of it being 
in their possession, or that any such coin was missing. The whole inci- 
dent, in all of its details, was new to us. The description given by Dr. 
Funk above accords altogether with our memory of what took place 
touching this affair ; there was no word nor action of any kind that led 
up to the question by " George Carroll" other than here given. 

(Signed) Leslie G. King, 
Emily Johnson, 
Louis Justement.' 

STATEMENT OF THE BUSINESS MANAGER OF THE 
DICTIONARY DEPARTMENT 

All portions of the above statement in which I had any participation 
are correct. I was absolutely certain that the coin had been returned to 
its owner, having instructed the Cashier's Department in 1893 so to return 
it ; and had never heard nor thought about that coin from that time up to 
the day that Dr. Funk told me of the strange request from the so-called 
spirit control. 

How the mistake was made in making for the dictionary a copy of 
the wrong coin I am wholly at a loss to understand, as it was my inten- 
tion to follow the instruction of the curator at the Philadelphia mint, and 
thought I had so followed ; but I now see that a mistake in some unac- 
countable way was made. Not being a Spiritualist, the entire incident 
has greatly puzzled me. 

How fully convinced I was that I had followed the instruction of the 
curator will appear from the following words on page 368 of " The Stand- 
ard Dictionary": "This coin has been termed lepton (the technical 
name of ' The Widow's Mite ') on the authority of Mr. Du Bois, for 
many years director of the United States Mint, Philadelphia." 

April 23, 1903. (Signed) B. F. Funk. 

STATEMENTS OF THE CASHIERS 

I am head cashier in the Funk & Wagnalls Company, and have been 
for over fifteen years. The description of the finding of the widow's 
mite as given in the statement above, as far as I am connected with it, is 
in all respects true. 

I was under the impression that the coin had been promptly returned 
to its owner. I do not remember seeing the coin nor the envelope con- 

» Was present only at the second meeting when the color of the coin was 
named. 



FROM DR. WEST'S SON 167 

taining it since 1893, nor can I remember to have heard or thought any- 
thing about it since that date. The two safes in the cashier's department 
were wholly in the charge of myself and assistants. No other persons, 
not even the officers of the Funk & Wagnalls Company, knew the com- 
binations of the safes, and no other employees at any time have access 
to these safes. (Signed) H. L. Raymond. 

April 23, 1903. 

We, the undersigned assistant cashiers in the Funk & Wagnalls Com- 
pany, declare that when asked by Dr. Funk to search for this coin we 
were not aware that it was in either of the safes. Its discovery was a 
complete surprise to us. (Signed) H. Tibbs, 

P. Turner. 
April 23, 1903. 

STATEMENT OF A. W. WAGNALLS 

The portion of the statement above in which my name is mentioned is 
true in all particulars. I knew nothing whatever of the fact, previous to 
the date on which the coin was found, that it was in our posses- 
sion. 

I have thought much over the incident and have examined every sus- 
picious circumstance connected with it, and can not discover the slightest 
chance for a fraud or trick to have been played. 

(Signed) A. W. Wagnalls. 

April 6, 1903. 

LAW OFFICE OF CHARLES W. WEST 

New York, April 6, 1903. 

My dear Dr. Funk : As sole executor of the estate of the late Dr. 
Charles E. West, I beg to acknowledge receipt from you this day of the 
copper coin known as "Widow's Mite," which many years since was 
loaned by Dr. West to you for the purpose of use in illustrating the plate 
of coins contained in Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary; and I wish to add, 
that so far as I can be certain of anything that passed in my father's 
mind since his loan of this article, I am sure that he supposed that it had 
been returned by you to him, as you until of late supposed you had 
returned it. 

As executor of my father's estate, I felt so certain that this coin had 
been returned that it never occurred to me to make inquiry of you whether 
it was in your possession. The extraordinary method by which your 
jssession of it was divulged has made a strong impression upon my 
mind, as it must upon all who have become acquainted with the facts, 
and I can assure you now that my intention is to preserve the coin in the 
family, associated as it is with the very extraordinary occurrences leading 
to your delivery of it to me, so long as that family shall continue to exist. 

(Signed) C. W. West. 






i68 VALUE OF THE COIN 

Mr. West assures me that no other members of his father's 
family knew of the loan of this coin or of its absence from 
its place in the collection. 

It should also be mentioned that the elder Mr. West and 
I were members of the same club, and dined together prob- 
ably not fewer than fifty times from 1893 up to the time of 
his death. This fact, and the fact that he did not in all 
these years speak to me of the coin, shows how completely 
he had forgotten about my having it. The son informs me 
that after his father's death he, as administrator, sold the 
coin collection for some ^17,000, and that he does not know 
its present possessor. He also says that he and his father 
valued the coin at ^2,500. 

POINTS TO OBSERVE 

1. I believed the coin had been returned. This was not 
a case oiforgetfulness, as my belief was based on the natural 
thought that my instructions for its return had been carried 
out. 

2. Mr. B. F. Funk's belief that the coin had been re- 
turned was also not a case olforgetftilnesSy as he too believed 
that his instructions had been obeyed. 

3. Mr. Raymond's, the cashier's, belief was a case of for- 
getfulness. He intended to return it, but forgot to do so. 

4. Neither of the assistant cashiers knew anything about 
the coin. They tell me that they now remember some three 
years ago to have seen the envelope, but that they knew 
nothing whatever about the contents except what was written 
on the envelope ; they knew nothing of the coins having been 
used in the making of the dictionary and nothing of the 
history of our possession of them. 

5. The cashiers alone knew the combinations of the two 
safes. 

6. The cashier's department is a single room about thirty 
feet by fifteen feet. 



IMPORTANT POINTS 169 

7. While the safes are open there is always at least one 
of the cashiers in this room. 

8. Mr. Roney was the only person at the seance with 
whom I had any previous acquaintance. 

9. Mr. Roney declares to me that he never saw inside of 
the two safes in the cashier's department, and says in his 
affidavit he never had heard that we had had such a coin in 
our possession or that we had used such a coin in the ma- 
king of the dictionary. 

10. On careful inquiry I am assured that there is not the 
slightest acquaintance between any of the cashiers and the 
medium or her family; they live widely apart in the crowded 
city of New York. 

11. Both Mr. B. F. Funk and myself believed that we 
had used the West coin in the making of the dictionary plate, 
and we had no thought or suggestion from any source to the 
contrary until the information came through the spirit con- 
trol that the correct coin — the black coin — was the one we 
had not used and then we were sure that the spirit control 
was in error. We did not yield this point until after we had 
received the above-mentioned letter from the Philadelphia 
Mint. 

12. No talk or question, not a word, led up to the direct 
inquiry from the control about the coin, and this is true 
also as to the questions and answers as given which made 
mention of the black coin as the one to be returned. 

13. All efforts failed to secure from the spirit control 
on three succeeding evenings the name of the person from 
whom the coin was borrowed and the name of the person to 
whom it was to be returned. 

POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS 

I. Fraud. 

II. Coincidence . 

III. Telepathy and clairvoyance — covering hypnosis, 
trance, subliminal personality, etc. 



lyo "SOMEBODY LIED" 

IV. Spirit communication. 

No explanation explains that does not cover in a reason- 
able way all of the facts involved. 

I. The Theory of Fraud 
"The explanation is simple ; somebody lied." 

The difficulties this theory meets : 

1. The medium is an elderly lady, sixty-eight years of 
age, against whose simple honesty I have not heard a whis- 
per, altho careful inquiry has been made of those who have 
known her for many years. I have now visited her house 
something like twelve times, ^ and have watched her care- 
fully — even when she has been under severe stress. My 
judgment of her is very favorable. She seems wholly art- 
less, simple-minded, tender-hearted, and ideally truthful. 
As my experience is that mediums often degenerate morally, 
I would not vouch for the future truthfulness of any medium. 

2. The medium up to the date of this writing, March, 
1903, receives no money for her sittings and insists that her 
name shall not be given by me in connection with these sit- 
tings, as she does not wish any increase in the attendance ; 
so it seems reasonable to exclude as motives those of gain 
and notoriety. 

3. The owner did not know that the coin was missing 
from the collection, and those who had access to the safe in 
which the coin was most solemnly declare that they had not 
thought of the coin for years. Had there been a desire on 
the part of any one to commit fraud, it does not appear that 
there was opportunity to do so. 

After an exhaustive investigation of all possible trick or 
fraud it seems to me that this theory is eliminated. 

It may not be amiss to say here that for years I was edi- 
tor-in-chief of a journal that made its mark as a fighting 

» Since this was written many times additional. This account was written 
March i, 1903. 



COINCIDENCE— CLAIRVOYANCE 171 

political reform paper of wide circulation ; I think no one 
will deny that in that capacity I gained considerable reputa- 
tion as an expert in unearthing frauds. 

II. The Theory of Coincidence 
" The law of averages runs through all nature." 

The difficulties this theory meets : 

1. " The Widow's Mite " is a rare coin ; there are but very 
few of what are known as " originals " in existence; not one 
man in ten millions has one in his possession, and the great 
probabilities are that I was the only man out of the sixteen 
hundred millions on the earth who had borrowed one and failed 
to return it. 

2. The naming by the control of Mr. Beecher as one 
interested in the coin's return — a man who was a close friend 
of Professor West, from whom it was borrowed. 

3. The pointing out of its location in a " drawer " " under 
a lot of papers " in a *' large iron safe." This guess might 
logically have followed the first, for if it were known that I 
had the coin, it was very likely, since the coin was valuable, 
that I would have kept it for safekeeping in just such a 
place. This reasoning, however, would have required a fairly 
shrewd business training, while the medium is an elderly 
lady who has had no training in business methods. 

4. The designation as the right coin that one which had 
not been used in the making of the dictionary. As there 
were but two coins, this might have been guessed ; yet imi- 
tations of ancient coins are usually colored black. 

5. The correct designation of the owner as one who had 
been connected with "a. ladies' school" "on the Heights" 
"in Brooklyn." 

III. The Theory of Telepathy and Clairvoyance 

" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt 
of in our philosophy." 

A. The points that favor this explanation : 



172 SPIRIT COMMUNICATION 

1. It was in the memory of Mr. West, myself, the head 
cashier, and Mr. B. F. Funk that the coin had been bor- 
rowed. 

2. It is possible that it was in the subconscious memory 
of the cashier, Raymond, that he had not returned it. 

3. It may have been in the subconscious memory of 
the assistant cashiers that they had seen in the safe the en- 
velope with the inscription on it : " This envelope contains 
two widow's mites." 

B. The difhculties this theory meets : 

1 . My memory was that I had ordered the coin returned, 
and I had never known the contrary; that I believed the 
coin had been returned, and I was the only one present at 
the sitting who could have known that the coin had not been 
returned; hence in what possible way could the facts have 
been in the subconscious memory of any one present .'' 

2. Had the medium's subconscious mind discovered, 
among the millions of things written on my subconscious 
memory, the fact that I had once borrowed such a coin, it 
remains to be explained how she knew that I had not re- 
turned it. My subconscious memory bore testimony to just 
the opposite. 

3. There is no probability that the medium had ever met 
the cashier, the only man on whose subconscious memory 
could have been an impression that this coin had been bor- 
rowed and had not been returned. How could she have 
picked him out from the millions of other men in the city of 
New York.-* Had she succeeded in thus picking him out, 
then she would still have had the farther task before her of 
finding out from the millions of impressions on his memory 
this inscription about " The Widow's Mite. " 

IV. The Theory of Spirit Communication 

A. The points that favor this explanation : 
I. Professor West's well-known deep interest in his coin 
collection, and the friendship between him and Mr, Beecher 



WHY SO TRIVIAL A THING? i73 

in earth life, and the presumption that this friendship has 
continued in spirit life. 

2. If the professor was interested in the return of the 
coin, it is likely that he would have remernbered that I had 
it, and would have deemed it probable that it would be found 
in my safe ; then by clairvoyance he could have thus located 
it, and then the rest could have followed. 

3. If communication between the spirit world and this 
world is possible and desired by spirits, it is quite likely Mr. 
Beecher would have been willing to have helped to turn this 
matter into such a proof of intercommunication between the 
two worlds as would arouse wide attention. 

B. Difficulties this theory meets : 

1. Why did not Professor West speak of this matter him- 
self, or, if he was not able to control the medium, why did 
not Mr. Beecher so speak .-^ He, I am told, has in the past 
spoken through this medium. 

2. Why was not the test completed by giving the name 
of the person from whom the coin had been borrowed and of 
the person to whom the coin was to be returned .'' 

3. If Mr. Beecher was desirous of giving a test proof 
that actual communications are taking place between the 
spirit world and this, why did he not choose to communicate 
something far more worth while? It would not be difficult 
to think of a thousand things concerning any one of which 
the world would have listened with strained attention to Mr. 
Beecher, and could have just as certainly recognized that 
his knowledge on these higher themes was beyond the 
knowledge current upon earth. 

Or: 

Is this a case in which we are to follow the directions of 
Huxley, to sit as little children before a fact and interrogate 
it — not dictate or dogmatize.'* 

Must we indeed become as little children to enter into 
communication and fellowship with the kingdom of heaven .'' 



174 CONFOUNDING THE MIGHTY 

If this be the right explanation, then truly the other world 
doth at times choose the foolish things of this world to con- 
found men who think themselves mighty. 



I. K. Funk. 



30 Lafayette Place, New York, 
March i, 1903. 



ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IN REPLY TO 
QUESTIONS 

Question i : " You say, In the conversation at this second circle I 
had given such clews as vitiated to some extent this test. In what 

way ? " 

Answer : This second circle was with another medium, 
and some time after I had been told about the non-return of 
"The Widow's Mite." I was informed at this second circle 
that Mr. Beecher was present, whereupon I said to the spirit 
control of the cabinet: "Will you please ask him about 
the ancient coin concerning which I was told in another cir- 
cle he is solicitous, desiring that I return it to the collection 
to which it belongs.'' I should like to have him tell me from 
whom I borrowed it and to whom I am to return it." This 
of course made of no evidential value the answer which I got 
that Mr. Beecher was not concerned about the coin, but sim- 
ply desired to give me a test. Had the answer been to the 
question asked, the clew would not have affected the answer. 

Question 2 : " Who knew, besides Professor West and his son, of the 
absence of the coin from the collection ? " 

Answer: The son thinks it altogether likely that his 
father told at the time other members of the family, and pos- 
sibly some persons outside of the family. This was nine 
years ago. He says the absence of the coin from the collec- 
ton was forgotten by all concerned. He had not heard any 
mention of its having been loaned from that time up to the 
present discovery of its whereabouts. Professor West was 
proprietor and head teacher of a fashionable ladies' school in 
the most aristocratic part of Brooklyn. The medium's fam- 



CROSS-EXAMINATION 175 

ily are in humble circumstances. I am fully convinced that 
of the few persons present in the circle, there was not one 
besides myself who knew that such a man as Professor West 
had ever lived. I am certain of this because of my cross- 
examination of those who were present, and because of what 
I know about them. 

Question 3 : " Who all were engaged in utilizing the coin for the dic- 
tionary, and do you not think mention was made of it to others?" 

Answer : My brother, B. F. Funk, had charge of it and of 
all the other several thousand illustrations that went into the 
dictionary. This coin was photographed, as were the other 
objects, and then returned to him. After that, not the origi- 
nal objects but their photographs were handled by the Illustra- 
tion Department. Quite likely at that time mention was 
made that this coin was supposed to be one of the coins the 
widow cast into the treasury at the Temple — this I assume, 
as the coin is a rare one. It is to be borne in mind that this 
transaction took place nine years before and in the heart of 
the great city of New York, where millions of notable things 
are taking place and crowd each other out of mind, and that 
this stance was held in a somewhat remote part of Brooklyn, 
among a few people who gave little attention to dictionary- 
making. And then it must be remembered that all those 
who had charge of the coin intended to return it to its owner 
and thought it had been returned. 

Question 4 : " Is No. 10 in ' Points to Observe ' fully ascertained — that 
there is not the slightest acquaintance between any of the cashiers and 
the medium or her family ? " 

Answer : Yes ; this point has been covered by the most 

careful investigation and cross-examination that I am capable 

of. 

Question 5 : " On the last page of your narrative you say that ' he 
[Mr. Beecher], I am told, has in the past spoken through this medium.' 
Can you say why he spoke through this medium, and what he had to 



say 



?» 



Answer : I can not say why, nor am I by any means con- 



176 PSYCHOLOGISTS QUESTIONED 

vinced that he did. I am told by those who heard what 
claimed to be Mr. Beecher's voice that he said that he was 
glad to find a Brooklyn medium through whom he could talk 
to Brooklyn people who lived in his home city. He then 
delivered a homily that is said to have been Beecheresque in 
style and full of common sense. After investigating along 
this line I have not been able to find anything that seemed 
to have the slightest bearing on the "Mite incident" one 
way or the other. 

"The Widow's Mite" Submitted to Psychologists. 

The history of " The Widow's Mite " incident, as given in 
the preceding pages, I forwarded to a number of the leading 
psychologists and other students in different parts of the 
world who were thought to be interested in psychic phenom- 
ena. The history was accompanied with the following ques- 
tions : 

Copy of Questions 

First Question : In view of all the facts, would you regard fraud on 
the part of some one as a probable solution.? 

Second Question : Is coincidence 2l solution within the range of prob- 
abilities? 

Third Question : Is there, in your judgment, any reasonable theory of 
the existence of subconscious f acuities that would explain all of the facts ? 

Fourth Question : Is the hypothesis of spirit communication a possi- 
ble solution? 

In reply I received a large number of answers. Forty- 
two of these answers, which fairly represent all, will be found 
printed in Appendix A. 

It is difficult to tabulate justly the preferred theory of 
each of these scholars, as many modify their theories with 
explanations and some hold mixed theories; others write 
what they regard as possible explanations while not ready to 
commit themselves to any particular theory. 

The following table will give an approximate notion of 
the views held by these scholars. The reader is urged to 



ANSWERS FROM MANY 



177 



consult the letters in full, which are given in the Appendix 
in the order here numbered. 

List of Some of the Principal Scholars in Different Parts of the 
World who have Written Concerning the Widow's Mite Incident. 
(See Full Letters, Appendix A.) 



Name. 



1. William James 

2. Geo. Trumbull Ladd . 

3. Alfred Russel Wallace 

4. C. A. Young 

5. Max Wentscher 

6. A. Kirschmann 

7 

8. A. Sadowsky 

g. Sir William Crookes. 

10. Frank Chapman Sharp 

11. Edward H. GrifRn 

12. Paul Carus 

13. I. J. De Bussy 

14. Walter D. Scott 

15. Collins Denny 

16. James H. Hyslop 

17. Thomson J. Hudson. . 

18. Louis T. More .... 

19. Frederick Slate 

20. Arthur L. Foley 

21. A. Riehl 

22. Robert M. Yerkes 

23. Benjamin F. Thomas. 

24. George Rebec 

25. Sydney H. Mallone... 

26. D. W. Hering 

27. M. Anesaki 

28. John Trowbridge 

29. W. B. Pillsbury 

30. Edward L. Nichols... 

31. John Daniel 



POSITION. 



Prof. Psychology, Harvard Uni- 
versity. 

Prof. Philosophy, Yale Univer- 
sity. 

English scientist 

Prof. Astronomy, Princeton Uni- 
versity. 

Prof. Philosophy, Bonn, Ger- 
many. 

Director, Psychologic Labora- 
tory, University of Toronto. 

Prof. Philosophy, one of the larg- 
est universities. 

Prof. Physics, Imperial Univer- 
sity, Jurjev, Russia. 

English scientist 

Prof. Philosophy, University of 
Wisconsin. 

Prof. History of Philosophy, Johns 
Hopkins University. 

Editor and author, Chicago 



Prof. Ethics and Religious Philos- 
ophy, University of Amster- 
dam, Holland. 

Prof. Psychology, University of 
Chicago. 

Prof. Philosophy, Vanderbilt Uni- 
versity. 

Late Prof. Logic and Ethics, 
Columbia University. 

Author, " Law of Psychic Phe- 
nomena," etc. 

Prof. Physics, University of 
Cincinnati. 

Prof. Physics, University of Cali- 
fornia. 

Prof. Physics, University of Indi- 
ana. 

Prof. Philosophy, Halle Univer- 
sity. 

Prof. Psychology, Harvard 
University. 

Prof. Physics, Ohio State Uni- 
versity. 

Prof. Philosophy, University of 
Michigan. 

Hollywood, Belfast, Ireland. 

Prof. Physics, New York Univer- 
sity. 

Prof. Literature and History, Im- 
perial University of Tokyo, 
Japan. 

Prof. Physics, Harvard Univer- 
sity. 

Prof. Psychology, University of 
Michigan. 

Prof. Physics, Cornell University. 

Prof. Physics, Vanderbilt Uni- 
versity. 



MOST Probable 
Theory. 



Subjective faculties 
and spirits. 

Fraud and honesty 
mingled. 

Spirits. 

Trick easiest solu- 
tion. 

Subconscious facul- 
ties. 

Fraud. 

Inclined to extra- 
mundane. 

Subconscious facul- 
ties. 

Spirits. 

Fraud or telepathy. 

All four theories 
open to objection. 

Coincidence ; spirits 
as last resort. 

Subconscious facul- 
ties. 

Self-deception and 
coincidence. 

Psychic facts not yet 
enough for gener- 
alization. 

Possibly spirits. 

Subconscious facul- 
ties. 
Possibly fraud. 

Not ready for decis- 
ion. 

Thinks solution 
fraud or spirits. 

Rejects spirit com- 
munication. 

Subconscious facul- 
ties. 

Fraud. 

Subconscious facul- 
ties. 

Possibly s u b c o n - 
scious faculties. 

Fraud. 

Spirits. 



Fraud. 

Possibly coi 

dence. 
Possibly fraud. 
Fraud. 



12 



178 PROFESSOR JAMES OF HARVARD 



Name. 



32. William T, Stead 

33. Arthur Allin 

34. Edwin B. Holt 

35. A. Meinong 

36. Alfred H.Lloyd...... 

37. E. Colsenet 

38. Minot J. Savage, D.D, 

39. J. Brough 

40. William Duane 

41. C. H. Parkhurst 

42. Sydney Alrutz 



POSITION. 



Editor Review of Reviews, London, 

England. 
Prof. Psychology, University of 

Colorado. 
Instructor Psychology, Harvard 

University. 
Prof. Philosophy, University of 

Gratz, Germany. 
Prof. Philosophy, University of 

Michigan. 
Prof. Philosophy, University of 

Besangon, France. 
Author, "Can Telepathy Ex- 
plain ? " etc., New York. 
Prof. Philosophy, University of 

Wales. 
Prof. Physics, Colorado State 

University. 

Clergyman, New York , .... 

Prof, of Psychology, University 

of Upsala, Sweden. 



Most Probable 
Theory. 



Spirits. 

Possibly uncon- 
scious deception. 
A jest. 

Unknown natural 
laws. 

Too trivial to be of 
spirits. 

Subconscious facul- 
ties. 

Spirits. 

Deception. 

Fraud and subcon- 
scious faculties. 

Possibly spirits. 

No opinion ; asks ad- 
ditional questions. 



Of this large number of answers to my questions — given 
in full in the Appendix — typical ones are those from Pro- 
fessors . James of Harvard, Ladd of Yale, Max Wentscher of 
Bonn, Germany, Anesaki of the University of Tokyo, Japan, 
de Bussy of the University of Amsterdam, Holland, Kirch- 
mann of the University of Toronto, Young of Princeton, and 
Alfred Russel Wallace and Sir William Crookes of England, 

Prof. William James, of Harvard, is so well known 
throughout this country and England as a psychologist that 
the reader will pardon me for giving here also his answer in 
full: 

From William James, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University. 

" I regard fraud as an improbable hypothesis, and, if the circum- 
stances are completely reported, not seriously to be considered. 

" The improbabilities of an accidental coincidence grow with the 
number of details which coincide. The medium hit so many details in 
reference to this " Widow's Mite" that the probabilities of her success 
being altogether accidental are very small. It is difficult to measure the 
improbability mathematically, but common sense will consider it almost 
infinitely great in this case. 

" In view of the many recent proofs that our ' subconscious self ' may 
often know what our conscious self is ignorant of, it is possible that the 
medium (had her subconscious mind been in communication with the 
cashier's subconscious mind) might have thus known that the coin had 
never been sent back. The greater genuineness of the darker coin, if it 



DO YOU SEE MY FACE? 179 

were not a pure coincidence, might have been similarly gathered from 
other minds at a distance. It is obvious that in the case under discus- 
sion subconscious mindreading would have to go beyond the actual 
sitters at the ' stance.' 

" The hypothesis of spirit communication is undoubtedly a possible 
one and simpler than any other, provided one supposes the spirits in 
question to have been tremendously inhibited in their communications. 
This is a necessary inference from the gaps and guesses which the facts 
they reported exhibited." 

2 

WAS THIS BEECHER'S FACE? 

In a circle in New York, shortly after " The Widow's 
Mite " incident, I was called up to the cabinet, it having 
been announced that Mr. Beecher was present and wished 
to speak to me. 

Sure enough, when the curtains were parted, there was 
the Beecher face, wonderfully life-like. 

" Doctor," said a deep, husky voice — all the spirit voices 
at this particular circle are peculiarly husky, except those of 
the three controls — " I am glad to talk to you in this way. 
I and others here wish you to organize on your side, and 
we shall organize on our side, for an effort to bring about 
conditions that will make it easy for us to come in a visible 
form and talk to you face to face. If we shall be able to do 
this, it will greatly tend to bring to an end all thought of 
materialism on earth, and will lift the world to a much higher 
plane of thought and action. Do not put this by lightly ; it 
means much to the world. 

" Do you see my face clearly? " He drew the curtains 
back, and the face was turned full toward the dim light. " It 
is with great difficulty that we come back into visible form. 
You have no adequate thought of the nature, the largeness, 
and the complexity of the difficulties that must be surmounted 
by the spiritual world in order to return in this way, but we 
can surmount these fully, so our scientific leaders assure us. 
We have surmounted them in part; your side can largely 



i8o MY EARTHINESS HINDERED 

help by supplying the proper thought and heart conditions. 
Do not smile when we speak of magnetism and vibrations 
and waves. There is such a thing as mind or soul ether. 
To this ether your thought and feeling and will and ours are 
disturbing and controlling forces — very real. You must 
study on your side these psychic forces and their laws. 

" I can not hold longer the force by which I have come — 
watch me closely." 

The image, or whatever it was, slowly sank to the floor 
and then disappeared. Before it sank, a hand was placed 
upon my shoulder. The hand was substantial — very human. 

What was it.** 

POINTS TO OBSERVE 

1 , I was not permitted to touch the curtain or the appari- 
tion, as my " positive earthly condition " disturbed in propor- 
tion to my earthiness, in some kind of a geometric ratio, the 
" vibratory conditions " which enabled Mr. Beecher to hold 
his visible form together — as it was afterward explained to 
me by the control. 

2, The room was so dark that it was impossible to deter- 
mine satisfactorily with the eye as to whether this was not 
an artistically got up imitation of the bust of Mr. Beecher; 
the bust only was visible, not the full form. I do not say 
that it was a fraud ; I simply say that I can not be sure that 
it was not. 

3, While I had taken the necessary precautions to exclude 
confederates, it was not permitted me to exclude the possi- 
bility of the medium consciously or otherwise impersonating 
a spirit form. I am convinced that mediums often uncon- 
sciously impersonate others, and will do it as readily if these 
others are living as if they are dead; I have often had talks 
with the " spirits " of living persons, and yet, singular as it 
may seem, there was no intentional deception. 

Before Mr. Beecher 's death I had had repeated conversa- 



IS THIS PARALLEL? i8i 

tions with him about the imsatisfactoriness of spiritualistic 
phenomena. If the form that here appeared had been Mr. 
Beecher, is it not likely that he would have sought harder to 
have given me proof of identification ? Possibly, as Professor 
James suggests, a spirit is tremendously inhibited when he 
comes into earthly conditions. Maybe his memory is con- 
fused. Possibly there are difficulties in keeping separate the 
impressions that proceed from the medium, from the mem- 
bers of the circle, and from the spirit. The magnetism and 
the vibratipns from the different personalities may get some- 
what mixed. In reply to close questioning along this line, 
the following thought was suggested by one who represented 
himself as a spirit control : 

" Evolutionists tell you that man has come up along the 
fish pathway of development. His lungs were once gills and 
he lived under water. Now, suppose the thought should 
come to some of you that it would be well to go down into 
the sea and help the fish develop to your way of thinking. 
In order to do this it would be necessary for you to get on 
the fish's plane of thinking and on the plane of the fish's 
physical condition. How would you go about it.'* How 
would you live under the water? And how communicate 
intelligently with the fish ? You might carry down under the 
water some concentrated air and remain there for a while, but 
by and by you would be compelled to say that your ' power to 
stay longer was exhausted.' Were fish intelligent enough, 
they might reason somewhat as follows : It is foolish to be- 
lieve that these men are what they claim to be, that they are 
descendants of our ancestors, that they were fish in a pre- 
vious existence. If they had been once fish, how easy it 
would be for them to prove it by living down here with us 
and talking to us in a language that we can understand. 
Until they do this, we will have none of them." 

In investigating these phenomena, at least in the present 
stage, it seems to me that we are wholly right in applying 
this rule : Exclude the spirit explanation if any other hypoth- 



i82 A "SPIRIT EXPLANATION 

esis will explain them. Even then we must remember that 
a conjurer like Harry Kellar will produce many a sleight-of- 
hand trick that we can not explain. It will not do to attribute 
to spirits all phenomena for which we can not find other 
explanation. But as a general working rule the rule is a 
safe one — reasonably safe as a working hypothesis. 

After the " Mite " incident had been published, a number 
of mediums in this and other countries made strenuous 
efforts to put me in communication with Mr. Beecher. I 
received many letters from both private and public mediums 
kindly volunteering their help to this end. The following is 
a sample of many of these letters : 

Denver, Colo., April i6, 1903. 

Dear Sir : I, as a "private individual," presume to offer the simple 
facts as related to me on the 14th inst., when the Chicago Tribwie first 
came to my notice, giving a description of the finding of the lost coin 
through spiritual agency. 

Having personal acquaintance with Henry Ward Beecher and being 
favored with several most interesting interviews since he passed away, I 
at onee sent a telepathic message to inquire if he would kindly grant me 
attendance at a stance, naming nine o'clock. Witliin an hour's time a 
messenger came to say that Mr. Beecher and Professor West would 
make a special engagement for thirty minutes later. 

The two gentlemen came promptly, and the following replies were 
given to inquiries : 

Question : Why did Professor West make special effort for return of 
coin? 

Answer — Prof. Charles E. West : " I was exceedingly anxious for the 
return of the coin to my family, as I had prized it very highly when on 
earth, it being a rare coin relic, and my family were aware of that 
fact." 

Q. : Why could not you give to the medium location of coin yourself? 

A. : "I could not utilize the medial influence at hand unaided, and re- 
quested Mr. Beecher to assist me in accomplishing it, as he and Dr. Funk 
were friends. Spirits in the higher life are subject to helpful personal 
influence, which we find a universal law of compensation in nature ; 
therefore we combine to perfect manifestations — the more efEective 
method of spreading this gospel of spiritual truth." 

At tliis moment Professor West requested Dr. S. B. Brittan, guide 
and teacher of the medium, to explain the principles involved in trans- 
mission of thought. 

Dr. Brittan : " Every effort made to bring the facts of communication 



THOUGHT WAVES 183 

between the spiritual and material states to public recognition receives 
the cooperation of intelligent minds, dwelling in spirit life ; accordingly 
the gentlemen in question united to emphasize this truth by using all 
ivailable means at command. The law of transmitted thought is ever 
the same in aD fields of human activity. 

" The spirit does not change its mode of expression because it has 
entered upon life beyond the change called death ; immortality of the 
human individual is established by divine law. The Creator carries to 
perfection by that law all the benefits that may accrue to the individual 
mind through expressed thought or intellectual communication. 

" Gentlemen, there are two elements inseparable from success in 
thought transference on all mental planes ; 

" First, the transmitter and receiver must be in haraiony with scientific 
laws governing through vibration. 

" Secondly, the spirit or inner consciousness liberates a series of 
thought-waves generated through electromagnetism by chemical affinity 
within the human brain, the reservoir of dynamic force. This power be- 
comes the transmitter and stimulates nerve currents to receive and convey 
to the perceptive faculties, or receiver, the ideas conveyed. Thought- 
waves may be thus continued through unlimited space should sensitive 
minds be acted upon as receivers, thus renewing dynamic force to repeat 
the process of thought transmission. Herein lies the marvelous mental 
power demonstrated in telepathy. 

" Spirits possess individual minds, still subject to the laws of organic 
life, and remain as completely dependent upon proper conditions for ex- 
pression as are their friends in the physical body. 

"It is true that all spirits labor under difficulties in giving perfect 
manifestations, as time is required to study the principles of magnetism 
and electricity — absolute factors in producing spiritual manifestations of 
every kind or degree. 

" Hence the receptive minds are those which more readily master the 
science of spirit control. Is it consistent to expect an untaught man suc- 
cessfully to manipulate a telegraphic instrument? Far more delicate and 
sensitive is the spiritual key and mental system used in spirit telepathy 
and telegraphy. 

"As to possible knowledge for locating the coin, tho Dr. Funk had 
wholly forgotten its hiding-place, Mr. Beecher might easily read the fact 
concerning it, indelibly recorded upon the doctor's memory, since the 
analytical mind of Mr. Beecher has lost none of its cultured skill, tho he 
may have exchanged his physical brain for the more delicate spiritual 
sensorium. 

" Those who are familiar with Henry Ward Beecher will realize tliat 
his chief characteristics enable him to accomplish a desired purpose, tho 
he uses the simplest aids conceivable. The employment of an humble 
spirit, as Rakestraw is termed by Dr. Funk, is strong testimony favoring 
Mr. Beecher's usual custom when in earth life, and excellent proof of 
personal identity." 



i84 IS THIS BEECHERIAN WITr 

Here Mr. Beecher requested the privilege of controlling the medium, 
and said : 

"If I, Beecher, desire to send a message from spirit lift and find a 
man who can convey that message effectively, I should scorn to reject his 
service tho he fail to possess a distinguished name or popular position. 
John Rakestraw has been accustomed to attend meetings and control the 
medium through whom the coin was discovered. What more reasonable 
than the united effort of Professor West, Mr. Rakestraw, and myself to 
effect return of the coveted coin to its rightful owners? 

" Dr. Funk, allow an old friend to suggest that investigation of new 
theology — spiritualism — requires the application of a healthful lesson, 
viz., use practical methods only, and remember that God gave human 
reason as the supreme judge of valid testimony in the last analysis. 

" Genuine communications bear the stamp of personal identity, and all 
manifestations rest on scientific laws. Spiritualism is your only hope for 
this materialistic age, and offers the one proof of immortality possible to 
the human mind, notwithstanding theological anathema. If evil spirits 
can communicate, it is by the universal law of expressed thought; and 
good spirits may as readily approach their beloved friends in earthly life, 
to soothe the wounds made by separation, and verify the scriptural prom- 
ise : 'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.' Knowledge of 
the future life disarms fear." 

With Longfellow's beautiful inspiration, let us rejoice : 

"There is no death— 
What seems so, is transition." 

Will Dr. Funk kindly accept the above with the request that he may 
carefully scrutinize the contents, and permit me to hope that truth may 
be apparent to aid him in solving the problem of spiritual manifestations? 

With respect, 



If mediums from Maine to California, and some across 
the sea, have done what they write to me that they have done 
or intended to do, poor Mr. Beecher's spirit, I fear, has been 
sadly harassed during the past year, and I am not at all sur- 
prised to learn that he has lost somewhat his patience, as one 
of the spirit controls reported to me that he has, saying : 
"The widow's mite bother Dr. F. to their hearts' content 
for aught I care. I will have nothing more to do with the 
affair." That at least has something of the old Beecher 
ring in it. 



SWEDENBORG FINDS A RECEIPT 185 



PSYCHIC PHENOMENA SIMILAR TO THE 
FINDING OF "THE WIDOW'S MITE" 

The finding of " The Widow's Mite " through telepathy, 
clairvoyance, or what is claimed to be spirit help does not 
stand alone among psychic phenomena. There are many 
reasonably authenticated similar incidents recorded. I in- 
stance here four typical cases. 

Case I. — The finding of a lost receipt by Sweden- 
bo rg. 

It will be remembered that in February, 1903, Mme. Anna 
Rothe, known in Germany as " the flower medium," was 
condemned by a German court to a year and a half imprison- 
ment for " imposture and swindling." In the critico-scien- 
tific magazine, Die Zukunjt, April 4, 1903 (Berlin, Germany), 
the editor, Maximilian Harden — perhaps the greatest jour- 
nalist in Germany — writes a long editorial in criticism of this 
judicial condemnation. He reminds the public of the fact 
that among those who believe in psychic phenomena are 
many of the ablest brains that the world has had or now has. 
He calls particular attention to the finding of this receipt 
for a considerable sum of money through Emanuel Sweden- 
borg, who claims that he got his information direct from the 
spirit world. The story is told by the German editor in full, 
giving the version of Immanuel Kant, the great German 
philosopher. The incident as told by Kant has often been 
repeated, and tho one hundred and fifty years have passed 
since this account has been given to the world by Kant, it not 
only has never been seriously questioned, but is now repub- 
lished without contradiction in one of Germany's ablest 
periodicals and is incorporated by Frederic Myers in his 
recently published work, "Human Personality." 



1 86 IMMANUEL KANT INTERESTED 

As there are strong points of similarity between the find- 
ing of this receipt and the finding of " The Widow's Mite," it 
has seemed to me well to give here the incident as described 
by Kant in a letter which he wrote to Charlotte von Knob- 
loch/ Kant prefaces his account of Swedenborg's remark- 
able supranormal powers as follows : 

" I would not have deprived myself so long of the honor and pleasure 
ofobeying the request of a lady v^^ho is the ornament of her sex, in com- 
municating the desired information, if I had not deemed it necessary 
previously to inform myself thoroughly concerning the subject of your 
request. . . . Permit me, gracious lady, to justify my proceedings in this 
matter, inasmuch as it might appear that an erroneous opinion had 
induced me to credit the various relations concerning it vi^ithout careful 
examination. I am not aware that anybody has ever perceived in me an 
inclination to the marvelous or a weakness tending to credulity. So 
much is certain that, notwithstanding all the narrations of apparitions 
and visions concerning the spiritual world, of which a great number of 
the most probable are known to me, I have always considered it to be 
most in agreement with sound reason to incline to the negative side ; not 
as if I had imagined such a case to be impossible, altho we know but 
very little concerning the nature of a spirit, but because the instances are 
not in general sufficiently proved. There arise, moreover, from the in- 
comprehensibility and inutility of this sort of phenomena, too many diffi- 
culties; and there are, on the other hand, so many proofs of deception, 
that I have never considered it necessary to suffer fear or dread to come 
upon me, either in the cemeteries of the dead or in the darkness of the 
night. This is the position in which my mind stood for a long time, 
until the report concerning Swedenborg came to my notice. 

" This account I received from a Danish officer, who was formerly my 
friend and attended my lectures; and who, at the table of the Austrian 
ambassador, Dietrichstein, at Copenhagen, together with several other 
guests, read a letter which the ambassador about that time had received 
from Baron de Lutzow, the Mecklenburg ambassador in Stockholm, in 
which he says that he, in company with tlie Dutch ambassador, was 
present at the Queen of Sweden's residence at the extraordinary transac- 
tion respecting Swedenborg, which your ladyship will undoubtedly have 
heard. The authenticity thus given to the account surprised me. For it 
can scarcely be believed that one ambassador should communicate to 
another for public use a piece of information which related to the Queen 
of the court where he resided, and which he himself, together with a dis- 
tinguished company, had the opportunity of witnessing, if it were not true. 

1 This letter is given in full in Borowsky's " Darstellung des Lebens und 
Charakters Immanuels Kant." Konigsberg, 1804, pp. 211-25. I here give the trans- 
lation as it appears in " Dreams of a Spirit Seer,'" by Frank Sewall. 



SWEDENBORG TALKS TO A SPIRIT 187 

Now, in order not to reject blindfold the prejudice against apparitions 
and visions by a new prejudice, I found it desirable to inform myself as 
to the particulars of this surprising transaction. I accordingly wrote to 
the officer I have mentioned, at Copenhagen, and made various inquiries 
respecting it. He answered that he had again had an interview concern- 
ing it with Count Dietrichstein; that the affair had really taken place in 
the manner described ; and that Professor Schlegel also had declared 
to him that it could by no means be doubted. He advised me, as he was 
then going to the army under General St. Germain, to write to Sweden- 
borg himself, in order to ascertain the particular circumstances of this 
extraordinary case." 

Then follows a description of two occurrences that most 
deeply impressed Kant. These I give in full, altho the second 
has been often told, as they illustrate very fully the peculiar 
power of Swedenborg : 

" In order, gracious lady, to give you two proofs, of which the present 
existing public is a witness, and the person who related them to me had 
the opportunity of investigating them at the very place where they oc- 
curred, I will narrate to you tlie two following occurrences. 

"Madame Herteville (Marteville), the widow of the Dutch ambassa- 
dor in Stockholm, some time after the death of her husband, was called 
upon by Croon, a goldsmith, to pay for a silver service Vv^hich hei" husband 
had purchased from him. The widow was convinced that her late husband 
had been much too precise and orderly not to have paid this debt, yet 
she was unable to find this receipt. In her sorrow, and because the 
amount was considerable, she requested Mr. Swedenborg to call at her 
house. After apologizing to him for troubling him, she said that if, as 
all people say, he possessed the extraordinary gift of conversing with the 
souls of the departed, he would perhaps have the kindness to ask her 
husband how it was about the silver service. Swedenborg did not at all 
object to comply with her request. Three days afterward the said lady 
had company at her house for coffee. Swedenborg called and in his cool 
way informed her that he had conversed with her husband. The debt 
had been paid several months before his decease, and the receipt was m 
a bureau in the room upstairs. The lady replied that the bureau had 
been quite cleared out, and that the receipt was not found among all the 
papers. Swedenborg said that her husband had described to him how 
after pulling out the left-hand drawer a board would appear, which re- 
quired to be drawn out, when a secret compartment would be disclosed, 
containing his private Dutch correspondence, as well as the receipt. 
Upon hearing this description the whole company arose and accompanied 
the lady into the room upstairs. The bureau was opened ; they did as 
they were directed; the compartment was found, of which no one had 



i88 THE STOCKHOLM FIRE 

ever known before; and, to the great astonishment of all, the papers 
were discovered there, in accordance with his description. 

" The following occurrence appears to me to have the greatest weight 
of proof and to place the assertion respecting Swedenborg's extraordi- 
nary gift beyond all possibility of doubt. 

" In the year 1759, toward the end of September, on Saturday at four 
o'clock P.M., Swedenborg arrived at Gottenburg from England, when 
Mr. William Castel invited him to his house, together with a party of 
fifteen persons. About six o'clock Swedenborg went out, and returned 
to the company quite pale and alarmed. He said that a dangerous fire 
had just broken out in Stockholm, at the Sodermalm (Gottenburg is 
about fifty German miles from Stockholm), and that it was spreading 
very fast. He was restless and went out often. He said that the house 
of one of his friends, whom he named, was already in ashes, and that his 
own was in danger. At eight o'clock, after he had been out again, he 
joyfully exclaimed, ' Thank God ! the fire is extinguished ; the third door 
from my house.' This news occasioned great commotion throughout 
the whole city, but particularly among the company in which he was. It 
was announced to the governor the same evening. On Sunday morning 
Swedenborg was summoned to the governor, who questioned him con- 
cerning the disaster. Swedenborg described the fire precisely, how it 
had begun and in what manner it had ceased, and how long it had con- 
tinued. On the same day the news spread through the city, and as the 
governor thought it worthy of attention, the consternation was consid- 
erably increased ; because many were in trouble on account of their 
friends and property, which might have been involved in the disaster. 
On Monday evening a messenger arrived at Gottenburg, who was de- 
spatched by the Board of Trade during the time of the fire. In the letters 
brought by him, the fire was described precisely in the manner stated by 
Swedenborg. On Tuesday morning the royal courier arrived at the 
governor's with the melancholy intelligence of the fire, of tlie loss 
which it had occasioned, and of the houses it had damaged and ruined, 
not in the least differing from that which Swedenborg had given at 
the very time when it happened ; for the fire was extinguished at eight 
o'clock. 

" What can be brought forward against the authenticity of this oc- 
currence (the conflagration in Stockholm)? My friend who wrote this to 
me has examined all, not only in Stockholm, but also, about two months 
ago, in Gottenburg, where he is well acquainted with the most respect- 
able houses, and where he could obtain the most authentic and complete 
information, for as only a very short time has elapsed since 1759, most 
of the inhabitants are still alive who were eye-witnesses of this occur- 
rence. 

" He has also given me an account of the manner in which, according 
to Mr. Swedenborg, his intercourse with other spirits takes place, and 
also the ideas which he communicates regarding the condition of de- 
parted spirits." 



HYPOTHESES EXAMINED 189 

In the incident of finding the receipt, the hypotheses of 
fraud and of coincidence may be safely eliminated. Two hy- 
potheses remain : 

I. That of the subjective mind. 

Points in favor of this hypothesis are : 

1. That if the subjective mind of a second person is able 
to become acquainted with the facts of the subjective mind 
of another person and have no consciousness of this knowl- 
edge, then it would be possible that the subjective mind of 
Madame Herteville got this information from the subjective 
mind of her husband before his death and yet had no con- 
sciousness whatever of this fact. 

2. There is a bare possibility that the ambassador may 
have told somebody else of the existence of this secret 
drawer and of the receipt and other papers being there con- 
cealed. 

3. The manufacturer who made the drawer knew of the 
fact that there was such a secret drawer in the bureau. 

Points 2 and 3 imply that Swedenborg may have got his 
information wholly unconsciously to himself from the sub- 
jective mind of either of these persons. 

Points agaitist this hypothesis : 

1. It seems extremely unlikely that the husband would 
have told other persons of the whereabouts of this receipt 
and of the drawer and not have told his wife, when it seems 
that both he and his wife lived upon friendly terms, and 
that she was intimately concerned about the location of this 
drawer and of the receipt there concealed. 

2. Swedenborg evidently intended to have it inferred that 
he got his information from spirits and not from any other 
source, and no one even now questions Swedenborg's abso- 
lute sincerity; hence if the theory of the subjective mind be 
valid, Swedenborg's subjective mind, unconsciously to him- 
self, must have read the subjective mind of some other per- 
son, who, unconsciously to that other person, got the secret 
from the ambassador's subjective mind. 



I90 KANT'S FEAR OF RIDICULE 

3. This supposition makes it necessary for Swedenborg 
to have found through his subjective mind the one or two 
persons in the world who was acquainted with this fact ; and, 
after having found this other person, he would have had to 
discover this particular fact in the person's subjective mind. 
Would not this be clothing the subjective mind of a medium 
with a power akin to omniscience? Where is there proof 
that it possesses such power? 

II. The spirit hypothesis. 

If we admit that spirits are able and willing to commu- 
nicate to persons of mediumistic power in this world, the 
difficulty which this hypothesis would encounter is for 
Swedenborg to have by thought transference come in com- 
munication with the spirit of Herteville and explained to 
him the lo^s of the receipt and to have got from him the 
exact information. 

As to the conflagration at Stockholm, if the existence of 
the faculty of clairvoyance is admitted, we have a sufficient 
explanation. 

The attitude which scientists and scholars generally are 
most prone to exhibit toward strange psychic phenomena is 
exhibited in Kant's later unfriendly bearing toward Sweden- 
borg. He afterward frankly admitted that he was influenced 
in this matter by fear of ridicule on the part of other scholars 
at his university. In a letter to Moses Mendelssohn, dated 
April 8, 1766, he says: "As a matter of fact, it would be 
difficult for me to conceive of a method of so clothing my 
thoughts that I shall not subject myself to ridicule." Dr. 
J. F. Immanuel Tafel, of the University of Tubingen, in the 
" Sammlung von Urkunden," iv., 255, expresses the opinion 
that it was Kant's fear of ridicule among his philosophical 
colleagues that led him to affect so trifling an attitude to- 
ward Swedenborg who had in reality deeply and lastingly 
impressed him. 

Maximilian Harden, in the article to which reference 
was made at the beginning of this section, recalls a remarkable 



GOETHE'S ODD EXPERIENCE 191 

psychic phenomenon which Goethe experienced and de- 
scribes thus : ^ 

" I rode now on the footpath toward Drusenheim, and there one of 
the strangest presentiments surprised me. I saw myself coming to meet 
myself, on the same way, on horseback, but in a garment such as I had 
never worn. It was of a light gray, mingled with gold. As soon as I 
had aroused myself from this dream, the vision entirely disappeared. 
Remarkable, nevertheless, it is that, eight years afterward, I found my- 
self on that same road, intending to visit Friederika once more, and in 
that same garment which I had dreamed about and which I now wore, 
not out of choice, but by accident. This wonderful hallucination had a 
quieting effect on me." Here, in this way, for a mourning one, a comer 
of the veil is blown aside, and, for consolation, a meeting again is pointed 
out in the distant future. 

Harden closes his comments on the Rothe sentence with 
the following suggestive remarks : 

" A few voices to which every one listens should remind us of this one 
point, that the questions which now appear to the philosophers of the 
press to require no answer have occupied our brightest heads very 
earnestly. ... In the first place, this modern world-survey has not yet 
reached down from its elevation into the darker lodging-places of the 
masses, and consequently it must in the dawning light arouse again to the 
attempt to provide a buffer-state betwixt knowing and believing. . . . 

" Yet men content themselves as if the court procedure against the 
flower medium, Madame Anna Rothe, has revealed an emptiness of experi- 
ence, and as if all those who testified for the accused were idiots who 
ought not to be allowed at large. Exceedingly modern was the atmos- 
phere of the petty Saxon public, and the folly of the critics who amused 
themselves with contemptuous witticisms. In Berlin, says the old Fon- 
taine, everything turns shabby. 

" Before the conclusion of the testimony one could not but ask : 
' Does this Rothe case taken as a whole show the proof -marks of fraud?' 
This question was answered by us in the negative ; but the court answered 
it affirmatively after a short deliberation. The flower medium was con- 
demned to imprisonment for a year and a half — a strange transaction, an 
incomprehensible sentence. The court summons witnesses for the de- 
fense — dozens — altho the proof -notes show that almost all testify to the 
same effect. They come, are sworn, and declare almost without excep- 
tion, ' we feel ourselves in no way injured ' ; the most say, ' we are con- 
vinced that no false representations were worked off on us by the Rothe 
woman.' Paragraph 263 calls for the devising of falsehoods and ' the 

' "Aus Meinem Leben," Book xi. 



192 CRITICIZES GERMAN JUSTICE 

injury of the good estate of another.' That makes no difference. The 
court says, ' You have all sworn what is objectively untrue. We find 
that you have been injured, and we sentence the woman, notwithstand- 
ing mitigating circumstances present in the case, hysteria, impaired men- 
tal accountability, within certain limits even good intentions — not to a 
fine, but to imprisonment.' To illustrate, let us suppose that a butcher 
has sold the back and legs of a sheep and on that score has been accused 
of violating the twelfth section of the food law. The purchasers are 
heard and say, ' The meat tasted well and did not injure our health ' ; but 
an inspector says, under his oath of office : ' I have examined the meat 
sold tliese people. It was fitted to injure human health,' Then the ex- 
perts step forth and say : ' Since the meat is as the inspector credibly as- 
serted, it must have injured the health of men.' Judgment — imprisonment 
for a year ; for a second year deprivation of civil privileges. 

" Almost exactly so it was in the Rothe case. The experts, after all 
the experience of science, after the results of investigations in the sphere 
of material existence, can only say : ' The sworn testimonies must be 
false.' Of course, an umbrella, for instance, could not come through a 
glass window without even scratching the window-pane — assuredly not. 
. . . The enlightened Roman, the learned Jew, smiled at the Galilean 
wonder-worker who at the sick-bed drove out evil spirits, and, almost five 
hundre i years after Hippocrates, could cure with saliva and the laying 
on of A'ls hands. Nevertheless, they who believed in Him were healed. 

" But the sentence has been pronounced on Frau Rothe — in the name 
of justice. The criticism of the tokens of fraud has become purposeless. 
Instead of tearing at the materialistic mind and deriding the sickly weak- 
ness of its adherence, one should rather ask whither such streams of 
occultism flow. 

" Is it into the fountain region of a new religion? That would explain 
the anger of the church officers. A young clergyman said to Schopen- 
hauer in the year 1850: ' He who believes in animal magnetism can not 
believe in God.' Now whole troops of people seek for a God who can 
live above and along with animal magnetism. We call their leaders 
quacks and humbugs. Certainly not without reason. When Max Miiller 
once asked one of the most sensible admirers of Madam Blavatsky why 
the prophetess let herself down to such common jugglery, he received 
the answer : ' Without miracles it is impossible to found any religion, 
and the founder has always to help along a little so that it may spread 
itself quicker.' 

" We must not allow the outcry of voices to deafen us. We must 
recognize in Spiritualism, in theosophy, in all the rivulets and brooks of 
occult lore currents which stream together for the high flood of a new 
faith. The water comes often out of a muddy slough, often also down 
from stately summits. At the imperial court of Berlin Theosophists and 
Spiritualists might easily raise a majority. . . . 

" Now can it be expected that such feeling as this, which seeks to 
lighten up the deep pessimism of Christendom and which in its own 



A LOST WILL 



193 



fashion would come to terms with modem knowledge, will be uprooted 
by penal declaration ? 

" This faith has already supplied itself with the needful miracles. If 
now only the martyrs should be furnished by the state, it will soon be 
able to build a church." 

Case II. — A spirit indicating to a Russian nobleman 
the whereabouts of a lost will. 

This affair has been so reasonably verified as to have se- 
cured its publication in the Proceedings of The Society for 
Psychical Research.' It also has been deemed worthy of 
publication by Frederic Myers in his work, " Human Per- 
sonality."' It was investigated by the careful Russian 
psychic student, Alexander Aksakoff, and published originally 
in his scientific periodical, Psychische Studien? 

It appears that after the death of Baron vori.Korf, at 
Warsaw, Russia, his will could not be found. The son of 
the baron gave to M. Aksakoff an account of the circum- 
stances which were printed in the following article : 

" The father, Gen. Paul von Korf, died at Warsaw on April 7, 1867. 
It was known that he had made a will, but after his death it could not be 
found. In the month of July, 1867, his sister, the Baroness Charlotte von 
Wrangel, was living with her sister-in-law, Madame D. von Obuchow, in 
the town of Plock (pronounced Plozk). not far from Warsaw. Her 
mother, the widow of General von Korf, was traveling abroad ; and in 
her mother's absence she was entrusted with the opening of her corre- 
spondence. Among the letters thus received and opened was one from 
Prince Emile von Wittgenstein (also abroad) addressed to the widow of 
General von Korf, in which he informed her that a spiritualistic commu- 
nication had been received by him in the name of her deceased husband, 
indicating the place where his will would be found. The Baroness von 
Wrangel, who knew how much trouble the absence of this will had given 
to her elder brother [Baron Joseph Korf,] who was engaged in the ad- 
ministration of the property and who was at that time in Warsaw, went 
at once, with her sister-in-law, to Warsaw, to inform him of the impor- 
tant contents of the letter of Prince von Wittgenstein. Her brother's 
first words were that he had just found the will ; and when the letter of 
Prmce von Wittgenstein was read, it was apparent, to the astonishment 
of those present, that the place indicated in the spiritualistic communica- 

> Vol. vi., pp. 3S3-5. * Vol. ii., p. 493. ' March, 1889, p. 131. 

13 



194 FINDING A LOST NOTE 

tion where the will would be found was precisely that in which the baron 
had at last found it." 

The following is the letter from the prince through whose 
mediumship came this spirit information : 

"Warsaw, July 17, 1867. 
"It seems an age, my dear parents, since I have had any news of 
you; my mother's last letter was dated June 5. I have occupied myself 
much with Spiritualism of late, and my mediumistic faculties have devel- 
oped themselves in an astonishing way. I write often with great facility 
in various kinds of writing ; I have had direct communications from the 
spirit which haunts Berlebourg, a woman of our family who killed her- 
self one hundred and two years ago. I have, moreover, obtained a very 
singular result. One of my friends, Lieutenant-General Baron de Korf, 
deceased some months since, manifested himself to me (without my hav- 
ing thought of him the least in the world), to enjoin upon me to indicate 
to his family the place where his will had been maliciously hidden; that 
is to say, in a chest of drawers in the house where he died. I did not 
know that the family were looking for this will, and had not found it. 
Well, they found it in the very place which the spirit had indicated to 
me. It is a document of great importance for the management of his 
property and for the settlement of questions which will arise when his 
children attain their majority. Here are facts which can stand criticism. 

" Emile Wittgenstein." 

Case III. — The finding of a lost promissory note 
through spirit communication. 

The verification as given in the " Reports " of the Society 
for Psychical Research (S. P. R.) of the finding through 
spirit intelligence of this lost note seems complete. Dr. 
Richard Hodgson, of Boston, is the secretary and treasurer 
of the American branch of the S. P. R., and is probably the 
most expert detective along psychic lines living. Sir Wil- 
liam Crookes, in his presidential address before the British 
Society for the Advancement of Science, in 1898, spealcing 
of Dr. Hodgson's ability in ferreting out these truths, names 
him a "detective genius"; and Professor James speaks of 
him as " distinguished by a balance of mind almost as rare 
in its way as Professor Sidgwick's." 

Dr. Hodgson reported the case of finding the promissory 



MODUS OPERANDI 195 

note in the Proceedings of the Society.' I give it here in 
part. It should be remembered that Judge W. D. Harden, 
of Savannah, Georgia, is well known personally to Dr. 
Hodgson, Dr. L. Knorr is a physician of good standing in 
the same city. 

G. 218. 

345 W. 34TH Street, New York, October 3, 1888. 
Dr. Richard Hodgson., 

My dear Sir : Thinking that you may possibly be back from your 
vacation, I send you with this the account of the finding of the note by 
Mrs. B. and the letter to me from Dr. Knorr. 

(Signed) W. D. Harden. 

Savannah, Ga., September i6, 1888. 
Judge IV. D. Harden^ 

345 W. ■Ty\th Street, New York. 

Dear Friend : This morning, when I paid a professional visit to 
Mrs. B.'s sick son, she showed me a rough draft of the statement she in- 
tended to send to you. Fearing further delay from her intended rewri- 
ting report, I begged her to let me have it. She consented, if I would 
explain to you the circumstances of the shortcomings of that draft. 

I think I need to add very little to Mrs. B.'s statements. You are 
acquainted with the modus operandi of the communications with the 
sliding-rod, the rod and the alphabet board being at B.'s house, the same 
you saw at Miss Maggie R.'s. In order to facilitate your description for 
Dr. H., I send you a paper model of the rod and a printed alphabet (with 
other convenient inscriptions), that is to be pasted near the two (right and 
left) edges, leaving a space between of sufficient width for the points of 
the rod to point out the desired letters. 

I have to remark that a couple of days after the death of Miss Nina 
'Q.''s fiance (Mr. N. H.) I assisted her to get into communication with 
him. We succeeded. Miss Nina turning out to be feebly mediumistic, 
and many communications were received from him. 

This attracted Major B.'s attention. He tried then with me (the 
major was then an agnostic), and found that he also was mediumistic, 
and he got communications from his father and his uncle that were so 
characteristic that he became convinced of the reality of spirit commu- 
nion. So when the major departed [died] last spring or summer, he was 
well acquainted with the modus operandi of spirit communion ; and 
therefore the very day after his departure we could receive a few words 
from him. Later on we received many messages from him. 

I think I was present at the s&nce when he stated that the note was 
deposited somewhere, but could not tell where. It looks as if at that 

1 Proceedings, vol. viii., pp. 238-42. 



196 HOW TELEPATHY EXPLAIN 

time he had not yet discovered the whereabouts of the note, but con- 
tinued hunting for it, and at last discovered it. 

I think I have touched upon every point that needed elucidation. 

L. Knorr, Savannah. 

\The Letter of Mrs. B.] 

Judge Harden : In compliance with your request I will state ; After 
my honored husband Major Lucius B.'s departure from this life, I was in 
distress of mind that none could understand but one surrounded by sim- 
ilar circumstances. Of his business transactions I knew but little. After 
a week or two of stunning agony, I aroused myself to look into our 
financial condition. I was aware that he had in his keeping a note given 
by Judge H. W. Hopkins to some several hundred which was due, and 
I searched all the nooks and corners of his secretaire, manuscript, letters, 
memorandum-books, read several hundred letters ; but all for naught. 
For two months I spent mxost of the time going over and over, but with 
the same result. I finally asked him at a seance about the note. 

Q. : "Have you deposited the note anywhere?" A. : "I have." 

Q. : " Where? " No answer. 

Finally I wrote to Judge H. (who had written me about it) : " I had as 
well tell you the note has not been found. I can not imagine where it 
is." This was on Friday. The following Sunday, about four o'clock, 
my daughter Nina, who possesses some singular power, proposed we try 
if we could not get a communication from our loved ones. While she 
went to get a little arrangement (a rod that v/orked on a board upon 
which the letters of the alphabet were printed) I sat in my room alone, 
thinking, if it were possible for Major B. to see the heart filled to over- 
flowing with anguish, and added to this the mind distressed by business 
cares, would he not communicate with me and try to give some consola- 
tion or assistance. 

But I did not express my thoughts to any one. Nina returned, and 
after a little conversation we put our hands on the rod a.nd \X promptly 
spelt " Look in my long drawer and find Willie." I became excited, ran 
to the bureau and pulled out the bottom drawer, turned the contents upon 
the floor, and commenced to search. Under all the things was a vest; 
in its little breast pocket was the note. 

Major B. was in the habit of calling the bottom drawer, where only 
his undergarments were kept, " My long drawer," to designate it from 
several small drawers set aside for his use. The vest was the only gar- 
ment, other than underwear, in the drawer. The vest was the one taken 
off him when he first became ill. He was unconscious during the first 
day of his illness. The vest was put in the drawer after or during his 
illness by my friend, I think, who assisted in caring for him while sick. 

The drawer had not been opened that we knew of after he left us 
until the note was discovered. Altho I had moved to another room, I 
gave instructions that the bottom drawer was not to be disturbed. 

As soon as the rod spelt " Look in my long drawer and find Willie," 



DR. SAVAGE'S EXPERIENCE 197 

I was perfectly electrified with the knowledge that Willie H.'s note was 
in that drawer, altho I never would have thought of looking in such a 
place for a valuable paper. 

Major B. and myself always spoke to and of Judge H. as " Willie," 
he being a relation of mine and a favorite of Major B. from Willie's 
childhood. 

I have just read the above to my daughter, and she says she will in- 
dorse the statement as being correct. I am, very respectfully, 

(Signed) Mrs. E. F. B. B., widow of the 
late Major Lucius C. B. 
(Signed) N. H. B. 

Savannah, Ga., September 16, 1888. 
The two signatures have been made in my presence, and I corroborate 
many of the facts and circumstances mentioned in the above report. I 
am now requested by the ladies to say that they do not wish their names 
to appear in public. (Signed) Louis Knorr, M.D. 

Case IV. — Rev. Minot J. Savage, D.D., directed by 
the spirit of his son to papers of which the doctor knew 
nothing. 

No one at all acquainted with Dr. Minot J. Savage's in- 
vestigations of psychic phenomena will doubt his level- 
headedness as an investigator. The following incident is de- 
scribed by him in his late book, " Can Telepathy Explain ? " ' 

I am now to detail a little experience which seems to me to have 
about it certain features which are very unusual, and therefore worthy of 
special remark. Never in my life until my son died did I attempt to get 
into communication with any special person at any sitting held with any 
medium. I have always taken the attitude of a student trying to solve 
the general problem involved. On two or three occasions, however, 
within the last two years, I have tried to see if I could get anything that 
appeared to be a message from my boy. He died three years ago last 
June at the age of thirty-one. I was having a sitting with Mrs. Piper. 
My boy claimed to be present. Excluding for the moment all other 
things, I wish definitely to outline this one little experience. At the time 
of his death he was occupying a room with a medical student and an old 
personal friend, on Joy Street in Boston. He had moved there from a 
room he occupied on Beacon Street since I had visited him, so that I 
never had been in the Joy Street room I knew nothing about it what- 
ever, and could not even have guessed as to anything concerning it which 
he might say. He said : " Papa [and this with a great deal of earnest- 
ness], I want you to go at once to my room. Look in my drawer, and 

1 " Can Telepathy Explain ? " pp. 105-8. 



198 FINDING WATCH AND BANKBOOK 

you will find there a lot of loose papers. Among them are some which 1 
wish you to take and destroy at once." He would not be satisfied until I 
had promised to do this. Mrs. Piper, remember, was in a dead trance at 
the time, and her hand was writing. She had no personal acquaintance 
with my son, and so far as I know had never seen him. I submit that 
this reference to loose notes and papers which for some unknown reason 
he was anxious to have destroyed is something which would be beyond 
the range of guesswork even had Mrs. Piper been conscious. Tho my 
boy and I had been intimate heart friends all his life, this request was 
utterly inexplicable to me. It did not even enter into my mind to give a 
wild guess as to what he meant or why he wanted this thing done. I 
went, however, to his room, searched his drawer, gathered up all the 
loose papers, looked through them, and at once saw the meaning and im- 
portance of what he had asked me to do. There were things there which 
he had jotted down and trusted to the privacy of his drawer which he 
would not have had made public for the world. I will not, of course, 
violate his privacy by detailing what they were. I will simply say that 
his anxiety in regard to them was entirely justified. 

Case v.— Finding of a watch through spirit 
direction. 

This incident is described by Alfred Russel Wallace, the 
famous English scientist, see Part III. 

Case VI. — Finding of a bankbook through Mrs. 
Piper as told by William James, Professor of Psychol- 
ogy, Harvard University. 

He says : " My mother-in-law, on her return from Europe, 
spent a morning vainly seeking for a bankbook. Mrs. Piper 
[the trance medium of the Society for Psychical Research], 
on being shortly afterward asked where the book was, de- 
scribed the place so exactly that it was instantly found. " ^ 

4 

THE TALKS OF SPIRITS AT "THE WIDOW'S 
MITE" CIRCLE 

That the reader may have a measure of the intelligence 
that is sometimes in evidence at the Brooklyn circle — the 
circle through which the widow's mite was found — I will 

' Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, vol. vi., p. 657. 



TALKS BY "SPIRITS" 199 

here give a talk by a spirit at the seance that preceded the 
finding of this coin and follow with a talk given at a stance 
shortly after this incident. 

The reader should bear in mind that this medium is an 
aged, uneducated woman, and that I have now met her at 
some forty circles, thus having had full opportunity to study 
her mental qualifications, I have fully proven to my own 
mind that there are no " confederates " at this circle. This I 
proved, among other ways, as follows : Some time after the 
mite incident, I selected as a standing place for the cabinet 
the corner of a room, and directly against a brick wall, and 
furnished my own cabinet curtains. There was no opening 
of any kind whatever from the cabinet except at the front, 
and I sat at this opening on one side against the curtain, and 
chose a friend to sit at the other side of the opening. There 
was sufficient light in the room to enable us to see the other 
two members of the medium's family and all other persons 
in the room. The talks came from the cabinet. I am 
fully convinced that they were either uttered by the woman 
medium or by some disembodied intelligences. I could de- 
tect no resemblance in certain of these voices to the voice of 
the woman or to each other. The medium is a frail woman 
who weighs scarcely one hundred and twenty pounds, and has 
a weak, feminine voice, while the voices of the speakers who 
uttered these two talks were strong and seemingly wholly 
masculine — not at all like the normal voice of the medium. 

First Talk — The Laws of Nature. 

A Masculine Voice from the Cabinet : " Your Jesus told 
you, heaven and earth should pass, but not one jot of the law 
should pass — that is, of the principles by which God rules. 
Principles are eternal. Character is of worth and eternal 
only when founded on principles. Mere profession is a lie, 
and liars sink. Learn to subject yourselves to the spirit of 
truth and you will ascend." 

Question : " But are we not saved by faith .■' " 



200 NATURE IS ONE 

Answer : " Faith of itself, as usually understood, is noth- 
ing. It is what we will to do that helps or hurts. Character 
comes from willing. When you come to the spirit world 
your measure is your character. What you have you leave 
behind ; what you are you bring with you. When Jesus told 
you He did not judge you, that your own acts judged you, 
He announced a principle, for your acts make you what you 
are. He told you that ' It is not every man that saith, 
Lord, Lord, that shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but 
he that doeth the will of God. ' What is it to do this will 
but to obey the laws of the universe, which are truth. The 
laws of nature are the will of God. Get rid of the idea that 
nature does not extend to this side of life. Nature is one, 
but has many spheres or departments. " 

Q. : " When you say that you obey the laws of nature and 
study nature, do you mean that you study the forces of nature 
and the applications of these forces, as, for example, elec- 
tricity 1 " 

A. : " Most certainly — far more so than you do on your 
side. Your study is crude, very crude. We also have our 
schools, in comparison with which your best schools are 
kindergartens." 

Q. : " Do you apply these laws to the perfecting of in- 
ventions } " 

A. : " Yes ; but the greatest hindrance to the entrance 
of knowledge is lack of humility. Conceit, pride are of the 
spirit of untruth, and this shuts the spirit doors. Good 
comes from above. The mind of man has great possibilities, 
but you must learn that mind, memory, consciousness sur- 
vive what you call death. The mind continues not only in 
its full vigor in all of its various faculties, but it is in many 
ways quickened. It is on this side the same mind, but is 
placed under far more favorable conditions and expands far 
more rapidly. Besides, consider we have minds here that 
have been thousands of years listening to instructions from 
spirits still higher, and have been and are themselves teachers, 



THE OPEN DOOR 201 

yet are ever students of nature's laws and forces, students of 
those same laws that are applicable to the physical world, for 
these laws under which you exist are in an exalted way appli- 
cable to the spiritual world. Now these inventions of which 
you speak, and for which you on your side are apt to be 
puffed up, are with scarcely an exception made here, some of 
them centuries ago, and were not given you until earth con- 
ditions were right for them. When these conditions have 
ripened, then they are impinged on some brain fitted to re- 
ceive them. The only credit that is thus due to that brain 
is that it was ready to receive the invention. The receiver 
of the wireless message can claim only one credit, and that is 
that it was attuned to the transmitter ; otherwise the waves 
would have passed by unheeded. A brain when attuned to 
the spiritual message will receive that message, and only that 
brain and others thus attuned can receive it. To all other 
brains there is absolute silence. Were the earth world ready, 
what it has received in the way of inventions are as nothing 
to what would be given it. 

" You ask why we do not tell you more. We tell you all 
that you can receive. Why does not the receiver get mes- 
sages for which it is not attuned.'' Waves may be passing 
in all directions, and weighted with most important informa- 
tion, but the receiver, not attuned to them, responds not at 
all. Do not imagine that we have no communications with 
your world except through mediums and their circles. Every 
brain that has uplift and is friendly to progress is an open 
door for us — an open door up to its capacity to receive. A 
man may not know from whence come his thoughts, but they 
come from the spirit world, back of his consciousness, and 
these thoughts we receive from sources still higher. You 
think that you originate, but you do not. If the doors of the 
earth world were open wider and men were more in harmony 
with us, so that they could more constantly commune with 
us, progress would be far more continuous and greatly accel- 
erated." 



202 SPIRITS ALSO LEARNERS 

Q. : " Yet our inventions come to us from men among us 
who have large brains. Why always so, if these brains are 
but echoes of the spirit world? " 

A. : " For us to impart to your world a complicated and 
deep thought, we must do it through a brain that can master 
such a thought. A human brain must be fitted for a thought, 
or the thought remains unnoticed, and no one human brain 
is far ahead of its age. As I have already said, the spirit 
world has an abundance to tell. What is needed is for your 
world to get itself ready to receive. Remember, as in your 
wireless telegraphy, the receiver must be adjusted to the 
transmitter. There must be harmony. 

" It is a law of nature that where and when there is a 
readiness to receive knowledge, knowledge is imparted. This 
is true in all spheres. All knowledge comes from above, 
always from above. We think a thought after it has been 
thought higher up. Original thinking is always above. 
Hence, humility also is truth." 

Q. : " Have you ever seen the person we call God .■' " 

A. : " No ; I have never seen such a person, nor have I 
ever seen any one who has." 

Q. : " Is there then no God ? " 

A. : " No God after the kind that is in your mind. May 
I ask what you mean by a person .'' " 

Q. : "I mean one who has a conscious individuality, a 
unity and continuity of mind, heart, memory. In this sense 
I speak of God as a person. Is there not such a God.-* " 

A. : " There is infinite truth ; we also are learners. What 
is truth .-* We speak of it as a principle. But back beyond 
our words and beyond all we know is the infinite center of 
things. Truth is life, truth is God. So with all elements 
that we call principles. We feel this infinite essence of 
things that is omniscient and omnipotent and perfect love. 
This infinite potency, call it what you will, draws us upward 
as the sea is drawn by the moon or as gravity pulls toward 
the center." 



NOT ANGELS, BUT PEOPLE 203 

Q. : " Do you see Jesus face to face? " 

A. : " No ; nor have I ever seen any who have. We are 
as you are. Never forget that life is continuous and the laws 
that govern us are continuous. We are not angels, we are 
people. We were as you are, and we still are as you are, only 
we have shaken off the outward covering. You can not see 
higher spirits ; neither can we. A spirit sees a spirit on its 
own plane and on the planes below it. You can not see 
God ; neither can we except we have the God nature. The 
pure in heart see God, and the loving heart sees God just in 
that degree that it is pure and that it loves. We see Jesus 
face to face as we develop His nature. How can a poet be 
understood except by one who is essentially a poet .-• Spirit 
recognition is by an inner response in a like nature. This 
is what Jesus meant when He said, ' My sheep shall know 
my voice.' This is true at every stage of spirit intercourse. 

" If you think out well what I say, you will reach my 
meaning when I tell you to understand and obey the laws of 
nature. I must say good-by to you." 

Q. : *' Will you not tell us your name.-' " 

A. : " My name signifies nothing ; be not curious about 
trifles. What I say is the only thing that is important. 
Good-night." 

Little Mamie, the control, began talking. 

Q. : " Mamie, will you not tell us who was the spirit just 
speaking.? " 

A. : " Wait a moment and I will see if I can find out." 

After a little while Mamie said : " The spirit's name is 
Wright— Silas Wright." 

If Mamie told us truly, we had been talking with the 
spirit of one who had been a famous governor of the State of 
New York. Was Mamie right or wrong.? 

From the cabinet came the voice of the control Amos : 
" A bright spirit is here whom I wish to introduce to you 
this evening. He will take a little time in teaching you 



204 REBIRTH ON EARTH RARE 

about reincarnation, a subject concerning which you have 
made inquiry. He is a highly developed spirit, and is a 
teacher with us. He comes in answer to the invitation of 
the band [the spirits controlling the circles]. You remem- 
ber you have asked questions on several evenings on this sub- 
ject which we could not satisfactorily answer, and for this 
reason we thought it well to request this advanced spirit to 
come and address you, and he has kindly consented to do so — 
I am sorry Professor Hyslop is not here, as he asked several 
questions on this subject the other evening." 

Second Talk — Reincarnation. 

A voice much stronger and seemingly very different 
spoke as follows : " Good-evening, friends. Reincarnation 
is the law of development of the soul or spirit. In the 
growth of the soul — and we all must grow, slowly it may be 
and with long cessations and sometimes less, but in the long 
ages it is growth — the time comes when it is born again and 
it enters into a higher sphere of existence. I am not talking 
about reincarnation on earth. A birth does not often take 
place from the spirit life back to earth life. Sometimes 
spirits are so much attached to the earth and its enjoyments, 
the gratification of animal passions and appetites and those 
pleasures that come through the other senses, that they 
reenter bodies and live again earth lives ; but this is not 
necessary. In the spirit body and under the conditions 
here, far greater progress can be made than in the earth life, 
and this is true in every succeeding sphere." 

Question : " Was Jesus reincarnated .■' " 

Answer: " He was, but this was not because of yearning 
for an earth life that He might enjoy its pleasures. It came 
from a strong desire to show mortals the way to a higher 
life, to teach men the truth, that is the way of growth. He 
came down from a great height and entered your sphere. It 
was the coming of a great light to the world ; much greater 
than you yet think it to be. Higher spirits can come down 



MUST BE BORN AGAIN 205 

by permission from the higher spheres, but it is a great 
spiritual achievement — in its way as difficult as reentering 
a womb to be reborn, and sometimes this is the way in which 
it is done." 

Q. : "Are we to understand that there is a rebirth from 
your sphere into a higher sphere — that is, that you now a 
spirit are to be reborn ? " 

A. : " Yes ; and then again and again until we are one 
with God, the great Father of us all in the distant ages — 
one, yet retaining our separate individuality ; a mystery not 
only to you, but to us also. So meant Jesus when He prayed 
that His disciples may be one as He and the Father are one, 
and when He said : ' Then ' — in the distant future — ' will 
ye know that I am in the Father and ye in me and I in you.' 
What you call death may be a birth — the soul enters its 
spirit body, is clothed upon. I remember well when I died 
looking at my spirit body as something objective, and I was 
attracted irresistibly to enter it. Every soul born on earth 
has a spirit body, and all souls in this realm have higher 
bodies more refined and subtler for their next reincarnation, 
and so on upward. The body is the system of organs by 
which the soul is brought into contact with its coarser envi- 
ronm.ents, or what in your life you would call the physical 
universe. As we ascend, these environments constantly be- 
come more and more refined, ethereal, but are none the less 
real. The progress is to greater and still greater reality. 
The law always holds : Ye must be born again. This higher 
birth can never take place until the soul has matured up 
to it." 

Q. : " But all men die. Some of the worst die earliest, 
and are thus ' born ' into your sphere. What then — since 
death does not depend upon maturity of the soul ? Can this 
death of a wicked person be a birth into a higher sphere ? " 

A. : "This death you speak of is not the rebirth that I 
am talking about. There are vast multitudes of spirits here 
who have not been reborn and are on the earthy plane ; some 



2o6 SIN HURTS ONLY THE SINNER 

have been in that condition for thousands of years, and 
will remain there until they of their own choice seek that 
which is above. There are those here who go about dazed, 
not knowing even that they have died. Others are in an- 
guish because of conscience and a sense of utter unworthi- 
ness. A man is in anguish and in darkness who is conscious 
of a sin for which he is not sorry and from which he has not 
turned away. A thief can not right a wrong by making 
restitution. If the one whom he wronged has become a spirit, 
how can he make restitution? Will he give back the money 
he has stolen ? A spirit does not need money nor will words 
of any kind help. A lower spirit can never make amends to 
a higher spirit, for he has nothing that is of worth to the 
higher. He must grow until he sees the defect in his spirit 
that made it possible for him to do wrong, and is sorry for that 
defect. And then, and only then, will the sin be gone. A 
man does not suffer so much for so much sin. It is not 
pound for pound or yard for yard. Suffering does not pay 
for sin. Suffering is only a remedy in so far as it teaches us 
the nature of sin and shows the way to perfect the spirit. 
One who has done wrong need not necessarily beg pardon of 
the one he wronged, for he really wronged nobody but him- 
self. If the one from whom he stole is revengeful, that one 
hurts himself and is carried down by his revengeful spirit. 
When the people on the earth plane know that sin hurts only 
the one that sins, a great gain will be made. When I say on 
the earth plane, I mean those who are on the earth plane 
whether on this side of the death line or upon your side. 

" Oh, my friends, if you only would know how right liv- 
ing on your plane will make you progress rapidly on the 
spirit plane, you would strive while in your present condition 
to do right, to love, to get rid of selfishness, and to hate deceit 
of every kind, and to grow your better soul powers. Life in 
your physical bodies is exceedingly important, and it is a 
great misfortune if a spirit comes over here without getting 
the full benefit of the earth life. We are laboring here to 



JESUS THE REAL WAY 207 

prevent this, seeking to impress upon earth minds a knowl- 
edge of sanitary laws, urging the adoption of measures that 
will prevent early deaths, and, what is of greater importance 
still, that will grow spirit excellence." 

Q. : " Are those who are born from your sphere into the 
next higher sphere as invisible to you as you are to us? " 

A. : " In a sense, yes ; we are conscious that they exist, 
and we can — that is, the highest of us — consciously com- 
mune with them by what you would call thought transference 
or spirit vibration. But there is a real chasm of a new birth 
between every two successive spheres, and each new birth is 
a marvelous change. I do not say that I am not permitted 
to tell what these changes are. I can not tell, nor would 
you understand me if I tried to tell you, any more than you 
could hope to explain to an ox the beauties of a picture by 
Rembrandt. The ox is drawn more to a handful of grass 
than to all of the paintings in an art-gallery. 

" I have never seen God, but have felt His restraining 
and enlightening and uplifting power. I always feel Him. 
I have never seen Jesus, but I feel Him. He is a great 
spirit whose thoughts come down from higher spheres and 
are of great help to this sphere. How great the benefit of 
His teachings to earth! Who can measure the benefit of a 
teaching like this : You are brethren and God is your Father, 
and you must love one another, not seeking your own, but 
giving your property and your lives for the good of others. 
This is the way to the truth and the life ; this is the way 
to the Father's house, that is, to the highest sphere. This 
reincarnated Jesus is sending His thoughts through our sphere 
and through your sphere and is greatly helping. He is a 
real Savior. Love is sacrifice, and sacrifice is atonement. 
Love gives itself for another, and that harmonizes the other 
with the higher sphere, with God Himself, if that other 
yields to the vibrations of this love. God can be just and 
accept any who yield themselves to sacrificing love." / 

Q. : " Dr. A says that he objects to Spiritualism be- 



2o8 THINGS WORTH WHILE 

cause it does not tell things that are of real importance to the 
world ; if these are real spirits talking, would they not tell 
us something of value to us? " 

A. : " Dr. A is intellectually and spiritually above 

the masses. Why does he not tell those who steel their 
hearts against him, those who are below him, the things that 
will help them ? Tho Jesus spoke the most important words 
ever heard on earth, the Scribes and Pharisees thought His 
talk was nonsense. If we give proof to those in your sphere 
— conclusive, positive proof — that there is a life beyond your 
life, proof that life is continuous, that is something, is it 
not .'' If we can break down materialism that raises itself 
like adamant in your way, is not that something of worth, 
and is it not worth the while of intelligent and good spirits 
to do this thing? If I tell you that there is reincarnation 
for those who leave the earth plane, an entrance into bodies 
that inhabit the spirit plane, and then that these pass from 
this spirit plane to the next above, and these again and 
again on to the highest life, should not that be something 

that is worth the while ? If Dr. A is called upon to 

bury a person, how does he comfort those who remain be- 
hind? Does he not say as the consummation of all of his 
consolations : ' I commend you to the infinite mercy of God ' ? 
A child of six years old could say that. We spirits seek to 
give you certain knowledge, and if you will listen to us you 
shall have it, certain knowledge that there is no death, that 
what you call death is no more destruction of your individual- 
ity than is the shedding of the skin a destruction of a ser- 
pent or the breaking of the shell is the destruction of the 
bird. We say that, and yet you say, tell us something worth 
while. In what are you better than the Pharisees ? They 
asked for marvels at the very time Jesus was uttering truths 
that had power in them to lift the earth from its sockets." 

Q. : " Can you tell us whether the human soul is wholly 
within our consciousness ? " 

A, : "I do not understand you." 



ONLY ONE SOUL 209 

Q. : " We are told by some learned men that there is a 
subliminal personality in every individual, a subjective mind, 
and that only about that part of the soul that comes into 
consciousness can we know anything. The other and greater 
part is outside of our consciousness, and of this we know 
nothing. Are there two souls or two parts of the same soul .? " 

A. : " There are not two souls in any individual — only 
one. Every spirit is a personality, and every personality is 
a unit — one." 

Q. : " Is the medium now wholly asleep so that no part 
of her soul is active ? " 

A. : " Her soul is taken absolute possession of by a spirit. 
It has no activity of its own during this hypnosis, no more 
thought, no more conscious individuality than if it did not 
exist. We use her physical, intellectual, and spiritual organ- 
ism, she having given her consent. We do this so as to con- 
vey to you our own thoughts, not hers. Of course we must 
conform somewhat to her physical and mental constitution, 
and to some extent our communications will receive color 
from her own thinking and feelings. This is always true 
except when there is great power in the spirit seeking to 
communicate and the medium unusually negative. For this 
reason it is of great value to you that mediums be of good 
minds and are virtuous, pure, wholly truthful. We can use 
evil mediums, but so can evil spirits. But with such me- 
diums even the communications of good spirits are at times 
twisted and vitiated so as to be really worse than worthless. 
But I must now close and leave you. I came on invitation 
of your band to talk to you on the subject of reincarnation — 
your questions have led me to ramble over a much larger 
field of thought. Good-night." 

According to Hudson, in his " Law of Psychic Phenom- 
ena," it is the subjective mind of the medium that "says 
and does " things when the medium is in a trance. One of 
Mr. Hudson's strongest proofs of this is that trance and 
14 



2IO FRAILTY OF SOME MEDIUMS 

hypnosis are the same, and that " every professor of hypnot- 
ism knows " that if other than the agent puts questions 
to the subject either the questions go unanswered or the 
spell is broken and the subject awakes. The same is the 
result if the subject is contradicted or argued with.^ If we 
apply this rule to the spirit talks just given, Mr. Hud- 
son's observation would seem to exclude the subjective mind 
hypothesis, as questions were freely asked and answered 
during these talks, in fact, many more than are here given. 

Unquestionably, the intelligence exhibited in these 
talks is far beyond that of at least the objective mind of the 
elderly lady who served as the medium. 

5 

OTHER PHENOMENA AT THE "MITE" CIRCLE 

At the many seances of the Brooklyn medium that I have 
attended since the finding of "The Widow's Mite," I have 
tried to study closely the phenomena there exhibited. 

The three personal experiences of which descriptions 
follow are typical of many others which I have witnessed at 
this circle. I am well aware that these will have but little 
evidential value except to those critics who place some con- 
fidence in my skill as an investigator and in my judgment 
that the woman was not a schemer and the family were not 
schemers. On these points I have satisfied my own mind. 
Whether the true explanation is to be found in the subcon- 
scious faculties of the medium or in supramundane intelli- 
gences I do not attempt to determine. 

It is true that many mediums who start out honest finally 
degenerate into tricksters — often revealing in their character 
a mixture of the fraudulent and the genuine. Now since this 
Brookyn medium has discovered her powers, it will not take 
her long to discover that these powers have a cash value, and 

' Hudson's " Law of Psychic Phenomena," pp. 76-8. 



WAS THIS MY ARAB FRIEND? 211 

then she will be strongly tempted so to use them, and then, 
to make them of more value, she will be tempted to " help 
out the spirits." I trust that she will be able to stand ; but 
to stand will take character and strength of will and intel- 
ligence. A medium is very often of infirm will and is " a 
negative " — unfortunately for us, at least seemingly so, me- 
diumship does not depend upon moral qualifications. 

As is frequently urged by controls, genuine mediums 
should be safeguarded, as their gifts are of great value to 
science and to the public, whether Spiritualism is true or not. 

Case i. — One evening "George Carroll," the spirit con- 
trol, said : " I see an ancient standing by the side of Dr. F. — 
no, not an ancient — doctor, were you ever in China } " 

"No." 

" Oh, this is an Arab. He does not talk, but he makes 
me understand that you know him; that you and he 
climbed a high place together, very high. He helped you — 
he and others. Did you climb a pyramid .'' " 

"Yes." 

" You had some Arabs to help you. This was the leader 
of those who helped you. He smiles, and makes me under- 
stand that before you got to the top you all rested and he 
held out his hand to you as if asking you for something." 

" If this is the Arab who climbed Cheops with me, will 
he tell me how many Americans were in my company? " 

" He holds up three fingers." 

In 1 87 1 a clergyman, then living at Easton, Pa., and a 
member of his church, and myself made the ascent of the 
great pyramid. I was assisted by four or five Arabs — five if 
my memory is correct. When about two-thirds of the way 
up, I became very tired, but did not wish to confess my 
weakness to the Arabs, so I took out my notebook and made 
them understand that I wished to describe the view. They 
watched me silently and with ostentatious reverence. When 
completely rested my description, was, therefore, complete, 



212 CORRECT AND INCORRECT 

and I put my book in my pocket. The leader approached me 
with a profound salaam, and said : " Is American man satis- 
fied?" "Yes," I replied; "American man is satisfied." 
"Then," stretching out his open hand to me, he said, "make 
me satisfied." 

I do not remember ever publicly to have described this 
scene, nor to have alluded to it for years. It is extremely 
unlikely that this medium or any of her friends could have 
heard of it. 

Case 2. — At another sitting with the same medium I 
was told that a brother of mine by the name " Crist " was 
present. I had a brother by the name Christian, we called 
him Crist; he died several years ago in Ohio, where he 
always lived. I asked a question, but was told that he was 
gone. I then said to the control : 

"Did you see that one who gave the name Crist? " 

"Yes." 

" Did you notice anything peculiar about him ? " 

" Yes ; he hitched when he walked." 

"In what leg?" 

"His left leg." 

One of this brother's legs was shorter than the other, 
about two inches. I do not think a dozen people in all 
Greater New York knew that I had such a brother, as he 
never visited me more than two or three times in thirty years, 
and then only for a few days. 

But here is a curious fact about this incident. I was sure 
when the control said it was the left leg that he was wrong. 

Some six months after this sitting this same brother was 
announced. I said to the control : 

" Do you notice anything strange about him? " 

"Yes; he is lame." 

"In what leg?" 

"The right leg." 

I thereupon made inquiry of my brother's family resi- 



WAS THIS CLAIRVOYANCE? 213 

ding in Michigan, and received word that it was his left leg 
in which he had been lame. 

Query : Did my certain belief that it was the right leg 
confuse the psychic power of the medium or was the first 
information a lucky guess ? 

I told this control at a later meeting of the mistake. 
The answer was : 

'' Always accept the first answer that comes from a cabi- 
net. Positive beliefs in a circle confuse the vibrations. In 
the spirit world conversations are by vibrations of thought 
ether. A thought or feeling with us is talk; positive belief 
in the earth circle is also talk to us, making vibrations on 
the thought ether, the same exactly as does spirit talk, and 
so we are not always able to distinguish whether the talk 
is from a spirit source or from an earthly source. I thought 
the answer ' the right leg ' at our recent circle came from 
your brother Crist, but it may have come from your own 
positive thought." 

Case 3. — At one time when the "negro spirit, Aunt 
Eliza," was present, a lady acquaintance of mine in the circle 
said to her : 

" Won't you give me a test, aunty } " 

"Yes, if 'tisn't too hard." 

" I want you to go to my house and tell me what two sim- 
ilar things there are in the parlors — one in the front parlor 
and the other in the back." 

In about two minutes the thumping of a tune on the wall 
was heard in the cabinet, and Aunt Eliza said : 

" Peayners. The nicest one is in the front parlor." 

The lady explained that a day or two before she had two 
pianos removed from a storage warehouse to her home, that 
they had been in storage for a long while, and had placed the 
finer one in the front parlor. She assured me that it was 
not possible that any one in the circle could have known of 
this fact, as she had not mentioned it. 



<« Some of us have proofs that the individuality persists after 
death, which are as certain as proof can be. . . . The laborious 
documents of The Society for Psychical Research are there for 
all the world to see, and while we have exposed much fraud 
and discredited much spiritualism, we have collected evidence 
of the possibility of communication between this and other 
worlds which deserves consideration. We are publishing shortly 
remarkable examples of automatic-writing, which some of us 
believe to be a com.munication from Frederic Myers. I believe 
this document will prove to be of great importance. . . . What 
we CAN take before the Royal Society and what we can chal- 
lenge the judgment of the world upon, is telepathy. Here is 
the beginning of a wider conception of science. . . . The whole 
region appears to be in the occupation of savages abandoned to 
the grossest superstition. But I say we have got to take the 
country and rule it for the advantage of mankind. Galileo, 
you remember, funked teaching the Copernican theory aban- 
doning the Ptolemaic, because he was not quite firmly seated 
in his University chair. It is exactly the same thing to- 
day. Men are too nervous, and not unnaturally, to avow 
any interest in a study which has so long been left in the 
hands of quacks and impostors. But some of them are bound 
to study it. Everything in the world has to be examined." — 
SIR OLIVER LODGE, M.Sc, F.R.S., D.Sc. Lond., Oxon. and 
Vict.; LL.D. St. Andrews and Glasgow; Principal of the 
University of Birmingham; President of The Society for 
Psychical Research, in the Pall Mall Magazine, London, 
January, 1904. 



PART III 

TELEPATHY— CLAIRAUDIENCE 

PHYSICAL EFFECTS 

WITHOUT CONTACT—MATERIALIZA- 

TION— SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY 

SPIRIT IDENTITY 



TELEPATHY— CLAIRVOYANCE 

Telepathy in a sense includes clairvoyance, altho in the 
vocabulary of psychic research there is a difference between 
the terms. Telepathy, strictly speaking, is the direct com- 
munion of mind with mind, whether in the body or out of 
the body — communion without the assistance of any of the 
physical senses ; clairvoyance is the ability to see indep>en- 
dently of the physical sense of sight. 

The Remarkable Reading of Series of Sealed 
Letters 

The Medium Named the One I Thought the Author, but Who 
was Not — An Instructive Mistake — An Extraordinarily 
Interesting Mixture — Coincidence Unthinkable — Ujideniable 
Mind-reading — Was this Joseph Cook? — My Niece's Success 
— Telling Whereabouts of a Leaf from the Family Bible — 
A Mediumistic Trick 

A few weeks ago I called upon a medium, Mrs. A., who 
was at the house of Judge C. in New York. Her home 
is in a neighboring State. I was known only by name 
to her, and I called by appointment, taking with me eight 
sealed envelopes. These envelopes contained each a letter 
written by some deceased person, also a note addressed to 
the writer in which I had written one or more questions. 
There was no writing whatever on the outside of the envel- 
opes except the penciled numbers, which tallied with an in- 
dex of the contents in my memorandum-book. The envel- 
opes I closed and sealed just before leaving my home, giving 

217 



21 8 READING SEALED LETTERS 

no hint whatever to any one, not even my family, of what 
the envelopes contained. In my various tests of this sort, I 
use invariably envelopes made of paper so thick as to make 
it impossible for the eye to detect the contents, even when 
the envelopes are held before an electric light. I also so 
folded each enclosed letter as to bring the name of the writer 
on the inside fold. 

The judge invited us to his study for our sitting, and he 
and all others, except the medium and myself, left the room. 
The medium and myself were seated on the same side of the 
table, so that her hands and lap were always within about 
thirty inches of me and in full view. She immediately se- 
lected out of the envelopes which I had spread on the table 
one numbered 5,004. She said: "I feel like going on a 
journey to the West some hundreds of miles. The writer 
of this letter does not live here. You do not know this 
writer-^that is, personally. I hear the name X.^ The per- 
son who wrote this letter is named X. Oh, this letter came 
through a medium, and this medium's name is also X. The 
person who wrote this letter is in the spirit world ; he wrote 
through a medium, and the medium's name is the same as 
his. But these two X.'s confuse me. Ah, there are three 
X. 's, the medium and her husband, but this husband did 
not write the letter — another X. wrote it. I hear the name 
Alexander — Alexander X. But this X. didn't sign his name 
to what he wrote. The name he signed to the letter which 
is in this envelope is * Pastor. ' " 

This was a very instructive test, especially so as the 
sequel proved. Some of the facts were unknown to me at 
the time of this sitting. The facts are as follows : 

Residing some hundreds of miles west of New York is a 
lady physician (whom I shall call Dr. T.), in whose home has 
developed lately a sensitive or medium. This mediumship 
is strictly private. Public consultations are not given, and 

1 1 do not give the correct names, as the family are not known as Spiritualists 
and request that these names be not given to the public. 



CLEARLY MIND-READING 219 

no money whatever is charged. Neither of the ladies was a 
believer in Spiritualism prior to this family experience, and 
they are not now Spiritualists in the ordinary acceptation of 
the term. Among the spirits who claim to write through 
this medium's hand are the medium's husband (Mr. X.) and 
the spirit of one who was the pastor of herself and husband, 
a very eminent divine while on earth. The publication of 
the account of the finding of " The Widow's Mite " led Dr. T. 
to write to me an account of the phenomena taking place in 
her home. She sent to me from time to time sermons and 
letters purporting to come from this deceased clergyman. 
These were always signed " Pastor." The name of the pas- 
tor was withheld, I was told, as he wished at some future 
time to reveal himself to me " in a way that would convince " 
me of his " identity." 

On last Christmas I received a short personal letter, pur- 
porting to have been written by the " Pastor " and signed by 
this pseudonym — written through the hand of the medium, 
Mrs. X. It was this Christmas letter, thus signed, that I 
had enclosed in the envelope with the question, " Will Pastor 
tell me his name .-' " The name " X. " was not in the envel- 
ope nor in my memoranda. There was no name inside the 
envelope but the signature " Pastor " and my name signed to 
the question ; and in my memorandum-book I had simply the 
name "Pastor." However, a few days before this time, I 
had written to Dr. T, my guess of the pastor's name, and my 
guess was Dr. X. 

The reader will observe that the medium, Mrs. A., told 
me : 

1. The name of medium X. 

2. The name of her deceased husband. 

3. The fact that the sealed letter was signed " Pastor," a 
fact that I had not told to any person. 

4. The name of Dr. X. as the correct name of the " Pas- 
tor," in answer to my written question in the sealed envelope. 

5. That the letter was written by a "spirit" through a 
medium. 



220 INSTRUCTIVE MISTAKE 

6. That the medium through whom this letter was written 
lived hundreds of miles to the West. 

All of these statements were exactly what I at that time 
believed to be true. 

The sequel is the most instructive point in the story. 
The " Pastor " is a different person from the one whom I had 
guessed ; I now know the facts. The medium, Mrs. A., told 
exactly what was in the envelope, and told exactly what I 
thought to be the true name of the " Pastor." 

It would be difficult to imagine a clearer case of mind- 
reading. 

The medium, Mrs. A., picked up from the table a second 
envelope numbered 5,006. A glance at my memorandum - 
book told me that the envelope contained a question to a 
clergyman who had recently died in the city of New York, 
and whom I will call Charles Johnson — for obvious reasons I 
withhold his correct name. The medium said : 

" This person is in the spirit world. He died suddenly 
by an accident. He says some thought it suicide. But he 
says that I shall tell you that he did not commit suicide. 
Gas had something to do with his death. Didn't he die 
through gas ? " 

"Yes. What was his name.'' Can you give it.-* " 

"J — O — Jones; no, John — John something. I can't 
make it out. I can't see the whole name. It is John — 
something. Tell me," 

" You are close to it ; can you give me his first name .'' " 

" I see the letter C ; the last letter of this name is S, and 
the next to the last is E, and the next L — it is Charles." 

"Yes." 

" He wants you to be sure to know that he did not com- 
mit suicide. He had suffered a good deal with sickness and 
was willing to go, but he did not kill himself," 

I thereupon opened the letter and immediately saw that 
I had made a mistake in numbering the envelope. The let- 
ter in this envelope was one from Mr. Beecher, and Johnson's 



WHAT MIND READS 221 

letter I had placed by mistake into Mr. Beecher's envelope, 
and hence my index was wrong. Yet the medium, with the 
Beecher envelope in her hand, answered exactly the questions 
in the Johnson envelope — answered them exactly as they 
were in my mind. When I opened the envelope and saw 
the mistake, and before I had said a word, the medium said: 
" Mr. Johnson is laughing at you ; he says you have made a 
mistake." 

This reading by Mrs. A. is also explicable on the theory 
of mind-reading. There is no chance whatever for fraud, and 
not one chance in a million for mere guessing or coincidence. 
As says one of the professors of psychology in the Appendix, 
speaking of coincidence as an explanation to "The Widow's 
Mite " incident, that an explosion of a type-foundry might 
some time in eternity result in the type taking the form of 
Homer's "Iliad." We can suppose anything, but practical 
sense, I feel sure, will here rule out as an explanation any 
theory of coincidence or successful guessing. Let us leap 
no chasms. If we admit mind-reading as a certainty in this 
and the former case, then what ? Whose mind did the read- 
ing of my mind.'' Was it the mind of the medium or that of 
her spirit control or of some other spirit present ? If it was 
the mind of the spirit he represented himself to be, why did 
he not at once detect the mistake.'' But we might also ask, 
If it was the mind of the medium who read my mind, why 
was it not equally easy for her to read what was in the 
envelope and to detect the mistake .'' 

Even on the hypothesis of spirits communicating, it is not 
likely that in these two cases the spirits were the persons 
they claimed to be — surely not in the case of Dr. X. 

Let us remember that mind-reading or telepathy is quite 
likely the result of what we call thought-waves. These 
thought-waves are interpreted wherever there is an intelli- 
gence attuned to them. It is reasonable to suppose that this 
law holds whether this intelligence is in the body or out of 
the body. To read sealed letters would require the exercise 



222 WAS THIS GEORGE HEPWORTH ? 

of the power that is more accurately called clairvoyance. 
Now with some minds, whether incarnate or discarnate, the 
exercise of clairvoyance seems a more difficult task than 
thought-reading ; hence it may have been easier to read the 
questions in my mind than to detect the error in the 
envelopes. 

I submitted this matter to a spirit control, and received 
the following reply : 

" Sometimes low earth spirits, as we call them, possess 
certain mediums who are not sufficiently on their guard. 
Nothing pleases this class of spirits better than to get back 
to their old earth conditions, and, in order to make their return 
more acceptable to these mediums, they will strive to give 
clients of the mediums the information for which they make 
inquiry ; by making themselves financially profitable to their 
mediums, they make their welcome sure. Yet it may be that 
in the case of the Rev. Dr. Johnson he was present and domi- 
nated the situation, giving his answers to the questions which 
you desired to ask and which he read in the other envelope, 
or he may have got them from the thought-waves coming from 
your mind." 

The following series took place with a sensitive whom I 
shall call Miss B. I had never met her before my first visit 
as described below ; my attention was called to her by Dr. 
Minot J. Savage. I called without an appointment or any 
introduction, telling her when she entered the parlor that 
unless she required it I should not give my name, as I wished 
to m.ake some test experiments. She replied, " Very well," 
and we immediately entered her sitting-room, which was 
light as day. This medium does not go into a trance ; the 
talk between us was natural; no table intervened between 
our chairs. Raps repeatedly came on the back of the chair 
in which Miss B. was sitting — an easy trick for a medium 
who is dishonest. She said : 

" I hear a voice saying, ' At it again. ' Strange ! this is 
George Hepworth speaking, and he says, * Doctor, we did 



EXACT INFORMATION 223 

this long ago. ' Did you ever investigate Spiritualism with 
Dr. Hepworth ? " 

" Yes, some twenty years ago. " 

" He says, ' Of course you did, but it was not very satis- 
factory. ' He asks, ' Why don't you take those letters out of 
your pocket? ' " 

" Out of which pocket ? " 

" That pocket " — touching my right-hand inner vest 
pocket. 



Before going to this medium I prepared a number of en- 
velopes, inserting old letters in some, in one a bit of hair, 
and had sealed the envelopes. The envelopes were in the 
pocket indicated. That they were there was not an impos- 
sible guess, as visitors to mediums often do just as I did, 
and the bundle may have been sufficiently large to indicate 
its presence to the trained eyes of one who makes a living 
by guessing. I took the package from the pocket. 

Among the envelopes was one, as already mentioned, that 
contained a little bit of hair — not a dozen hairs, none an 
inch in length. These were from my son's head, and were 
tied with a white silk thread and enclosed in a sheet of note- 
paper. She immediately covered this envelope which was in 
my hand with her own hand, and instantly said : " This en- 
velope contains a little something which belongs to a living 
person— some hair, tied with a white cord — no — a white 
thread. The person to whom this belongs has suffered very 
greatly in mind and body and has been watched over by one 
who has cared most tenderly for him. He is better, and 
will get well." My son was just recovering from a four 
years' siege of a most trying nervous prostration. Other 
things she said about him, all of which were correct. These 
few hairs I could not detect from the outside by the hand. 
Afterward I had Professor Hyslop, of Columbia University, 
examine the envelope, and he pronounced it impossible to 
tell from the outside of the envelope what was inside; that 
is, by the use of normal powers. 



224 A REMARKABLE READING 

Of only one other envelope would she speak at that time. 
This contained a letter from a member of my family now 
deceased. Miss B. took the envelope in one hand and said : 
" This contains a very old letter, yellow with age, written in 
a very even hand; the writing is very fine, the letters are 
small and neatly made; it was written by a lady now dead." 
She described the writer of this letter, and the description, 
as far as it went, was perfectly accurate. The letter was 
written over thirty years ago, and was yellow with age, and 
was written in a very fine hand, with not a blot nor ill-made 
letter. Miss B. closed the seance by saying : " I see you are 
investigating Spiritualism with a clergyman now. I see be- 
fore me the letters T-U-P." This was surprisingly cor- 
rect, but she may have guessed who I was, and the fact of 
my investigation with a gentleman named Dr. Tupper may 
have become known to the medium through some mediumis- 
tic system of exchange of information. 

At a second sitting with Miss B. I had with me eight 
or ten sealed envelopes, some numbered and others unnum- 
bered. These I had prepared over a month before for a test 
with another medium, and could not tell for certain what any 
one envelope contained. I purposely avoided consulting my 
index, so my own mind could tell nothing. I took from the 
package one numbered 105. 
I said to the medium : 

" Can you get anything from this? " 

" Let me see." 

And she immediately took the envelope in her hand. As 
she did so, she said : " This is a sweet influence, most gentle, 
loving, and lovely, always thinking of others, trying to do 
something for somebody else. [Then suddenly :] Why, 
what is this ? What does this mean .-* She throws up her 
hands and says : 'I did it, I did it, I couldn't help it.' I feel 
a very strange influence." Then turning fully toward me, 
the medium asked quickly : " Did this lady commit suicide .■* 
Yes, I know she did. She was not in her right mind, she 
tells me; it was not love — it was overstudy. She was 



TELLS WHAT I FORGOT 225 

trying to help some others when her mind was overtaxed 
and gave way, Tell me about it. I hear the name Ella, 
Ella." 

I then took from my pocket my index. It gave after No. 
105 the name Ella Martain— I do not here give the correct 
name, but did with my question in the sealed envelope. 
This lady was the daughter of an acquaintance of mine, and 
had a few months before committed suicide. She was a 
young woman of a charming disposition, loved by all who 
knew her, exceedingly gentle, very sweet of heart, and very 
ambitious to do something to help her family, as she did not 
wish to be a burden to them. The family was in somewhat 
straitened financial circumstances. This worried the 
daughter and caused her to overwork. She had taken charge 
of a school in which she was teaching art, and at the same 
time was seeking to qualify herself for a state superinten- 
dency; depression followed the overtaxing of her mind, and 
in a fit of melancholy she took her life. It should be 
remembered that I had sealed this envelope with others nearly 
a month before, intending to use it with another medium. 
I had forgotten just what I had written inside of the envel- 
ope. I wrote down on the envelope the words which Miss B. 
had spoken, and in my office, in the presence of my secre- 
tary, after reading to him the record on the outside, opened 
the envelope and on the inside found folded a slip of paper 

on which were written these words : " Will tell 

me why she took her life.?" My secretary immediately 
made the following record : 

" On Wednesday, this third day of June, 1903, Dr. Funk 
showed me a sealed envelope, the contents of which I was 
unable to discern when the envelope was held before a 
bright light. The said envelope was opened in my presence 
by Dr. Funk, and from within was taken a piece of paper 
that had been folded over twice, on the inside of which the 

following question was written : ' Will tell me 

why she took her life.? " 
15 



226 FEAR FOR MY ORTHODOXY 

Miss B. added, as I took the envelope from her : 

" I see the hand going as if it were drawing or painting 
something. Was this person an artist? This spirit tells 
me that she left a picture unfinished, and that you will find 
a mark in a book only partly read. She says : * Tell mother 
not to worry ; it is now all right. ' " 

It is true that she left on an easel a picture unfinished ; 
I made no inquiry as to the mark in the book, as in almost 
every household a number of books contain bookmarks. 

This test may be explicable by the hypothesis of telep- 
athy, as in my own mind were the facts in the case, except 
the fact of the unfinished picture ; and, if clairvoyance be 
true, my written question in the sealed envelope could have 
been read. 

I then handed the medium another envelope. As she 
took it. in her hand, she said : 

"This is from a departed person of great strength, a 
clergyman, I think; one who is what would be called ortho- 
dox, and who laid considerable emphasis on orthodoxy. He 
seems afraid to have you investigate Spiritualism, He him- 
self did some little investigating, but was afraid of the sub- 
ject. He is concerned about your investigation, as he fears 
that it may undermine your orthodoxy. He repeats the 
name, ' Christ, Christ, Christ; let nothing come between 
you and Christ. ' He was a man of large brain, but narrow 
in his views ; and yet he was a man of a large heart. " Then 
she turned to me, asking : " Do you know what is in this 
envelope ? " 

" No ; it is not numbered." 

" Will you let me see it? " 

I opened the envelope and found in it a letter which, 
without unfolding, I saw at once was in the handwriting of 
Joseph Cook. She quickly said to me: "Don't unfold it; 
only let me have it in my hand," I gave her the letter 
folded, and she held it for a moment in her closed hand, 
and said : 



"ONLY A COOK" 227 

" My little control keeps saying the words : * Cook, cook, 
only a cook.' Was the writer of this a servant of yours, one 
who worked in your kitchen, a cook? " 

"No." 

"Well, that is curious; all I can hear is, ' Cook, cook, 
only a cook.' My little control says this laughingly. I 
don't know what it means if this man was not a cook some 
time in his life." 

When she could get nothing more, I showed her the signa- 
ture — "Joseph Cook." She looked surprised, and said: 
" Who was he.'' " She may have recognized the handwriting 
when I opened the letter. She did not see the signature, as 
the letter was folded with the signature inside. Miss B. is 
not what would be called a well-read woman, and the proba- 
bilities are greatly against her ability to recognize at a glance 
the handwriting of Joseph Cook. 

Shortly after this experience of mine with Miss B. there 
was visiting in my home in Brooklyn a niece of my wife, 
whose home was in Toledo, Ohio. She was a total stranger 
in New York. I will here call her Miss M. Miss M. had 
had some experience in Ohio in investigating psychic phe- 
nomena, is alert to deception, of quick eye and good judg- 
ment, and is a good investigator, being neither overcredulous 
nor repellent to mediums. As she was a stranger in the 
city, I thought it well to have her make a test visit to Miss 
B., which she did in November, 1903. It may be well to 
say that Miss B. lived in upper New York, over seven miles 
from my residence. 

Miss M. is a rapid stenographer and made notes on the 
back of the envelopes of what the medium said about each. 
In her report to me she said that 

" Miss B. did not at any time ' fish ' for information, as is 
usual with many mediums, and I gave her not the slightest 
clew about myself, my own name, home, or history, or about 
the contents of any of the envelopes; nor did she ask a 
single question about any until after she had given what 
information she could." 



228 TELLS MANY FACTS 

Miss M, took with her a number of sealed envelopes. 
Among these were three prepared by myself. These I got 
ready in my library, without the slightest intimation being 
given to Miss M. or to any one else as to their contents. 
The six envelopes examined by Miss B. are given below, 
with the results of the tests. The first three are those pre- 
pared by Miss M., and the second three are those prepared 
by myself. 

Envelope i contained a medical thesis written by the 
father of Miss M. , who was a physician. It was nearly forty 
years old. The paper was written, in the opinion of Miss M., 
when her father was attending medical lectures at Willoughby 
College in Ohio. The medium, after touching the envelope, 
said : 

"I hear the word ' Toledo.' I get the letters ' F ' and 
* W.' I do not know what these letters mean. I also get 
the nariie ' Ella.* This Ella is your oldest sister. There 
are three of you, I see two brothers-in-law. You are not 
married. Your oldest sister has six children. You are not 
living with her, but you have been together during the sum- 
mer. Your oldest sister does not live in Toledo, but toward 
Cincinnati. Your father says : ' Tell Ella she has not heart 
trouble; it is only nervousness.' I hear ' Tom.' Your sis- 
ter has a son by that name," 

Miss M. tells me that " This reading by the medium was 
correct in every point. She did not fumble, half utter a 
name, and then change it. Each name was given correctly 
at first. The letters ' F ' and ' W ' were correct, if F 
referred to the surname of my father and W if it referred to 
the name of the college for which this thesis was prepared." 
The medium also gave an accurate detailed description of the 
cemetery and grave where Miss M.'s father and mother are 
buried. She said : 

" Your father says you need not worry so much about the 
condition of the grave; that that does not signify. Your 



GIVES EXACT DAY 



229 



father also says : ' I knew at 1 1 130 on Thursday night that I 
would not get well' " 

Miss M. informs me that she has a man hired to take care 
of the graves, and that she has been concerned because the 
burial plot had been permitted to run down. Her sister Ella 
had expressed concern about her heart ; naturally so, because 
both her father and her mother had died of heart trouble. 
Miss M. also says: "My father died on March 7, 1890; 
the night before his death he had a very bad turn and we felt 
that he had given up all expectation of getting well. He 
died about two hours afterward." After getting this report 
from Miss M., I looked in a perpetual calendar and found 
that March 7 fell on Friday. Miss M. informs me that 
her father died at i :30 a.m. Hence the Thursday night in 
the message is correct. 

Envelope 2 contained a letter from a lady acquaintance 
who had committed suicide. 

Medium : " I can get nothing from this letter except that 
it is from a lady who committed suicide. She suffered from 
melancholia. I can see her face, very white and distressed, 
and her large dark eyes. This lady does not belong to your 
family. " 

This, as far as it went, was wholly correct. 
Envelope 3 contained a letter written by the mother of 
Miss M., now deceased. 

Medium : " There is something in this besides the letter. 
It may be hair or something like it. There is also a clipping 
from a newspaper about the death of a friend. The edge of 
this clipping looks as if it were cut uneven or turned over. 
She calls you ' May' and ' Mamie.' She is your mother." 

Miss M. showed me the contents of her letter. Instead 
of hair, there was a little bit of black braid; it looked like 
hair, and the letter also contained a clipping from a news- 
paper ; the clipping was folded unevenly, and described the 



230 FACTS UNKNOWN TO "SITTER" 

death of a friend of Miss M. Miss M.'s name is May, and 
she is often called Mamie. The reference to the clipping 
was perfect. 

The following three envelopes were the ones I gave Miss 
M. ; in giving them, as said above, I did not reveal the slight- 
est clew to their contents. The medium picked out the three 
letters from the bunch of letters and said : " These three 
you know nothing about. They have been given to you by 
a friend and are given for a test. " 

Envelope 4 contained a lock of hair given to me some 
time before as a test by my brother, to be used with another 
medium. I knew nothing of the owner of the hair. 

Medium : " I can get nothing at all from this — nothing 
at all." 

Envelope 5 contained a slip of paper on which I had 

written the words, " Will tell me why she took 

her life.'' " (Signed) "I. K. Funk." (The name of the per- 
son appeared in the spaces here left blank; this lady had 
been a teacher.) The note was written on ordinary writing 
paper with blue ink and much blotted, and was folded with 
the writing inside. By no possibility could the writing be 
read by the natural eye through the notepaper and the heavy 
envelope in which it was sealed. This was the same note, 
and to the same person, as used in my personal test with Miss 
B. described on a previous page. In this present test I put 
the note in a different envelope from the one that I had used 
in my visit with Miss B. 

Miss B : " This refers to a lady. She says : ' Tell him I 
don't know why I did it. I wish I were back again in life. 
It would be so different.' This lady committed suicide. I 

see books piled around her, and I hear the name . 

[Correct.] This is written in blue ink and is much blotted. 
You did not know this lady, but you know of her. This 
letter is sent by a friend of yours as a test. This friend 
knew the lady." 



A PROPHECY 231 

Envelope 6 contained about fifteen hairs which I clipped 
from my head and tied with a silk thread. When tied, the 
construction of hairs and thread had the shape of a figure 8. 

Medium: "This is foolishness. It is given only as a 
test by one who is living. I see something that is like 
this " 

She drew a sort of figure 8 with the threads or points 
sticking out. Her drawing was so nearly like the lock of 
hair with the silk thread as it lay in the paper after the 
envelope was opened as to cause Miss M. to break out into 
a laugh. 

Medium : " The man that sent you with this, and whose 
hair this is, is engaged on a work that has to do with type- 
writing. I see a lot of pigeon-holes. The work on which 
he is engaged will be finished in March." 

It happened when I arranged these envelopes for Miss M. 
that I was leaning against a large group of pigeon-holes in 
my study; right alongside was a desk on which were piled 
the manuscripts for this book. Miss M. was not present. 
Whether the book will be issued in March the future will 
have to determine. 

Fraud and coincidence are barred absolutely as explana- 
tions of the above remarkable series of tests. Clairvoyance 
would largely explain them, so would the spirit hypothesis; 
but not many psychologists accept the former hypothesis, and 
still fewer the latter. 

The facts, however, remain; and after them I place a 
huge interrogation point. 

My niece. Miss M., since her return to Ohio, has written 
out at my request the following experience that she and 
other members of her family had two years ago with a me- 
dium, Mrs. C, who resides in the West : 

" Our family had no acquaintance whatever with Mrs. C, 
prior to our call upon her professionally. We went without 



232 GIVING NAMES CORRECTLY 

any introduction or appointment, and were careful not to 
give the slightest clew to our identity. 

" She told us the full names of our father, * Thomas,' our 
mother, ' Catherine,' and our uncle, * John,' all of whom had 
resided in a different part of the country and had been dead 
many years. She also gave their surnames. She told us 
that our mother was present, and said that my sister had a 
little girl at home by the name of Catherine ; that at the 
time my sister gave her that name my mother, who was then 
living, objected somewhat, but that she wished to say that 
she was now glad that the name was given, and that it was 
a special work of hers in the spirit world to guide and care for 
this little grandchild. 

" Mrs. C. then gave us both many full names of friends 
who had departed this life, including relatives on my sister's 
husband's side of the house, some of whom my sister had 
never met. She also told us that with our mother came a 
little boy by the name of Willie, who was the child of our 
oldest sister who resided in a different city. This child had 
been in the spirit world since he was a little baby. 

" A year later my two sisters and their husbands went to 
a public meeting of Mr. and Mrs. C.'s. At this meeting, at 
which there were two or three hundred people, Mr. C, who 
is also a medium, gave the full names of my father, mother, 
and uncle, and also to my oldest sister and her husband the 
full name of their little boy, Willie Zay A . 

" All of these names were given to us promptly and with- 
out any assistance on our part. In fact, we asked but few 
questions and took every precaution against giving clews. 

" Mrs, C. seems to me to have remarkable supernormal 
power of some nature unknown to science, or at least un- 
known to me." 

At my request my brother, B. F. Funk, had a sitting 
with the medium. Miss B. He also was a total stranger to 
her, and called without any appointment and did not give his 
name ; nor is there any telltale resemblance between himself 
and myself. He had with him a number of sealed envelopes. 
Among these were two from myself, one of which contained 
the same bit of notepaper that my niece took with her in 
calling upon this medium and which I had with me on my 



MY BROTHER'S EXPERIMENTS 233 

first interview with this medium. On this notepaper the 
reader will remember that I had written the question : " Will 

tell me why she took her life ? " I used again 

the precaution to place this slip in a different envelope. I 
count my brother experienced and careful in spiritualistic 
investigation, and he is a stiff skeptic as to the spirit origin 
of the phenomena. It should be remembered that in each 
of my envelope tests nothing is written on the outside except 
the number of the envelope. 

My brother reported that the medium took the envelopes 
in her hand, and said that one was addressed to a person 
who had committed suicide, and that she heard the names 
" Toledo, Tom, Louisa." It will be remembered that when 
my niece visited this medium with this same letter — the 
envelope, however, it is to be remembered, was different — 
the medium said she heard the names "Toledo and Tom." 
My niece's home was in Toledo, and the medium told her 
that Tom was the name of one of the six children in the 
family of her sister Ella. The only connection between my 
brother's visit to Miss B. and my niece's visit was the fact 
that both carried to her this letter in which was written my 
question to the lady who committed suicide. 

Miss B., taking another envelope, said : 

"This is addressed to Henry, or rather Harry — Harry J." 
This was correct. She went on to say : 

"This man died suddenly — heart or head trouble. Is 
not that true ? " This brother died from apoplexy while out 
walking. My brother, B. F., in his written account of his 
experience with this medium, continuing the report, says : 

" Next she pressed between her two hands a letter which 
I had addressed to my mother. Miss B. said : 

"'This seems to be a young person, very much attached 
to you ; and then again she seems to be old. She was very 
religious, and seems to be a Methodist, as she is singing 
"Nearer, my God, to Thee." No — she was of German ex- 
traction and talked German. She was raised to believe in, 



234 "IS THIS A GOOD TEST?" 

or identify herself with one faith, and then she changed to 
another. I think it was Presbyterian. She was very reti- 
cent, slow to make friends, but those she had were stanch 
friends. I think she was a sister — was she .-' ' 

"I said 'No.' 

" * She seems young. Would you mind opening the 
letter ? ' 

" I opened the letter. She fumbled it in her hand, and 
may possibly have seen the name or the word ' mother' — 
barely possible, but I think not — and then said : 

"' Oh, your mother! That is it. I thought it was a 
young person, as she had your grandmother with her. She 
says, " Tell Bennie to tell Isaac to go slow with what he is 
doing." She is holding your nephew by the hand — a young 
man — Isaac's son. He says, "Tell father he is working too 
hard. He simply must let up, or it will be serious," ' 

"I said: ' Can't you tell mother to give me a test or 
answer my question in the letter ? ' 

" The medium then said : 

" ' Your mother tells me : " Ask Bennie why he didn't 
put those leaves back in my Bible, the old family Bible." ' 

" I asked, ' What leaves ? ' 

" She said : * What you have in a drawer.' 

" I then recalled that I had leaves or a leaf of the old 
family Bible which I found among the old papers of father's 
in a pigeon-hole in his desk after his death, nearly a score of 
years ago. Quite likely one of our sisters had taken this 
leaf out of the Bible, as it contained a record of their ages. 
I said to the medium : * I remember having a leaf or leaves 
containing the births or deaths. ' 

"She then said: 'Your mother says, "Is this a good 
test?'" 

" After reaching home I found that I had in my bureau 
drawer one leaf, not leaves, lying flat on the bottom of the 
drawer, and that it belonged to mother's old family Bible. 
I do not know who has the Bible. " 

My brother's name is Benjamin— mother called him 
" Bennie." " Isaac " is my own name, and my son died when 
a young man. Our mother died before she reached fifty. 
She was of German descent, having been born in Pennsyl- 
vania, and when she moved to Ohio could not talk English. 



A SHALLOW FRAUD 235 

She was a member of the Mennonite Church, and afterward 
joined the Presbyterian Church. I did not have any knowl- 
edge whatever of my brother having the leaf of the family 
Bible, and he says he never told any one in Greater New 
York of this fact, and had himself forgotten it. He lives on 
Staten Island, over ten miles distant from where the medium 
lived, and had never met nor even heard of her before I re- 
quested him to call upon her. 

A Mediumistic Trick 

It may be of interest to the reader to contrast with the 
above the following unsatisfactory tests which carry with 
them the earmarks of a kind of fraud that dishonest mediums 
are working very successfully just now throughout this coun- 
try and Europe. " 

Visiting New York at this writing are two well-known 
mediums whose names I feel tempted to give, but shall call 
them Mr. and Mrs. T. Having heard much of their " rare 
gifts," I visited them. While waiting in the parlor I was 
asked to write on a pad which was handed to me questions 
to " any two spirit friends," and then to fold the paper and 
put it in my pocket. All of which I did exactly as instructed, 
and then in another room I was seated at a table opposite 
the medium in full light. 

Medium : " You have a paper in your pocket on which 
you have written questions. Will you kindly take out the 
paper and burn it ? " 

She struck a match, and I held the paper in my hand 
until it was partly reduced to ashes, and then kept my eye 
on the remains until the cremation was complete. 

" Why this .? " I asked. 

" The essence from this burned writing permeates in this 
way the surrounding ether, and the spirits more easily sense 
the questions." 

At this explanation I could scarcely keep my nose from 



236 SHREWD "SPIRITS" 

turning upward a little; it sometimes grows rebellious at 
these places. 

The medium soon announced the presence of the spirits 
to whom I had addressed my queries, and these were an- 
swered to the last detail. 

The trick practised by this medium is a simple but usu- 
ally an effective one. The pad on which questions are 
written in the parlor is the key. This pad is made of thin, 
sensitive paper, and the pencil handed the visitor is hard and 
sharp; the impression of the pencil is clearly seen on the 
under sheet, which is passed in to the medium by the parlor 
attendant, and the medium thus knows exactly what is written 
on the folded slip in your pocket, and which is burned. 

Shrewd spirits ! 

During the next few weeks I quietly urged again and again 
upon this medium and her husband that I be permitted to 
bring ■ questions written at my home, and that these be 
burned and then answered. 

But the conditions for an experiment of this kind were 
never favorable. 

Instead, I was invited to bring my questions, duly written 
at home, to a dark seance. At these dark seances with this 
medium the questions are thrown into a letter basket on the 
table. A music-box is set going, and all the lights are turned 
completely out, and all hands, including those of the medium 
and her husband, are joined on the table. In about ten min- 
utes a voice speaks through a trumpet which is left lying on 
the table. The voice answers the various questions deposited 
in the basket. 

To perform this trick, all that is necessary is that a con- 
federate enter the room in stocking feet and take the basket 
with the questions from the table, and then in another room 
read the questions, and return and announce the answers 
through the trumpet. 

And yet such shallow tricks are fooling the people by the 
tens of thousands. 



ONE OF THE FOX SISTERS 237 

It is difficult to say which deserves the more blame, the 
dishonesty of such sharpers or the silliness of their dupes. 



Experience with Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane 

Surprisingly Accurate Information — Persistent Misinforma- 
tion — Agreement zvith the " Spirits " — A Strangely Mis- 
chievous Intelligence— ^^ Not so Smart as You Think You 
Are " 

In the year 1878 I determined to make a serious investi- 
gation of Spiritualism, having dabbled before somewhat in 
the waters. ' I quietly found the address of Mrs. Margaret 
Fox Kane, one of the celebrated Fox sisters with whom 
the phenomena of Spiritualism are said to have started in 
1848. I went to her room wholly unannounced, not having 
made any engagement nor having told any one of my inten- 
tion. I had never previously met her, nor is there any like- 
lihood that she had in any way heard of me. I was little 
known to the public, nor had my picture up to that time 
appeared in any public print — at least, not so far as I had 
knowledge. Mrs. Kane lived in a poor neighborhood in 
New York, on the second floor, and, as I afterward discov- 
ered, she was very poor financially and unfortunately had be- 
come addicted to strong drink. It is a fact to be noted that 
a number of the earlier mediums fell victims to evil habits 
— a fact that told, rightly or wrongly, against the cause of 
Spiritualism. In judging any system that touches along the 
lines of morality, we have a right to take into account the 
influence of the system on those who profess it. This is not 
the only test ; but it is a test, and the advocates of Spiritualism 
do not act wisely when they object to the application of it. 

The room into which I was ushered was poorly furnished, 
having three cheap chairs and a light stand or table. While 
waiting for the appearance of Mrs. Kane, I moved the table 
from the spot on which it was standing, and turned it upside 
down to see if there were any wires or other apparatus. I 



238 MY "UNCLE SEITZ" 

voted that it, at least, was innocent of trick. On Mrs. 
Kane's entrance she seated herself at the little stand. 
Immediately we had many raps, and much automatic writing 
followed. Each writing, as those acquainted with automatic 
writing often find, had, as far as I could judge, the individ- 
uality of the seeming intelligence that it was claimed wrote 
the message. After many messages we had a loud double 
rap, and in reply to my question who it was that was rapping, 
the hand of Mrs. Kane wrote rapidly : " I am your uncle, J. 
Seitz." The oddity of this name and the fact that I had a 
cousin whom we always called " Uncle," by the name of J. 
Seitz, aroused at once my interest, especially as this uncle, 
when I last heard from him, was alive and well. We had 
the following conversation, he answering through the writing 
of Mrs. Kane : 

" Are you living or dead? " 

" I am dead." 

"When did you die.?" 

The answer was by nine raps. 

" Nine years ago .-' " 

"No." 

" Nine months.-' " 

"No." 

" Nine weeks } " 

"No." 

" Nine days ? " 

"Yes." 

" Where did you die ? " 

I was told to call off the names of different States, which 
I did, being very careful not to give the slightest clew by the 
tone of my voice. After naming half a dozen States and 
coming to the name Ohio, immediately the answer was : 

" Yes. " 

Then I was told to call off the names of different cities 
in Ohio. This I did until I came to the name Springfield, 
when the answer was : 

"Yes." 

I knew that Mr. Seitz had his home in Springfield, Ohio. 
Then I said : 



AN AGREEMENT WITH SPIRITS 239 

"Am I to understand that you died in Springfield, Ohio, 
nine days ago? " 

The answer was, with considerable emphasis, "Yes." 

I then said : " I was not aware that you had died. Shall 
I write to Springfield, Ohio, and find out the facts .? Now, 
if this turns out to be true that you did pass out of this life 
nine days ago in Springfield, I will regard this as a good 
test. Shall I do so ? " 

Immediately there were raps seemingly all around the 
room. 

I said : " Very well. I will write down now in my note- 
book as follows : Jacob Seitz, my uncle, says he died nine 
days ago in Springfield, Ohio." I said : " Is this now mutu- 
ally understood by us to be a test of the truth of Spiritual- 
ism.?" 

Immediately the response again was general. 

Two days after this I had another sitting with Mrs. Fox 
Kane, and after a number of other communications the same 
double rap came. I asked: "Who is this.?" Immediately 
there was a message signed " Your uncle, J. Seitz." 

I said : " How long ago was it since you passed out of 
life.?" 

The answer was prompt — eleven raps. 

I said : " Eleven years .? " 

"No." 

" Eleven months .? " 

"No." 

" Eleven weeks .? " 

"No." 

" Eleven days .? " 

" Yes." 

Then I went over the whole series of questions again as 
before, and the answers were the same : that he had passed 
out of this life eleven days before in Springfield, Ohio. 

I said : " I have written to Springfield for the facts, and 
it is understood that this is a test " ; and I read from my 
memorandum-book the understanding. 

Immediately there was a general response of raps all 
around the room. 



040 EXCEEDINGLY ODD 

I had written to my sister, Mrs. Kate Deaver, of Spring- 
field, Ohio, to let me know when she had seen " Uncle " Jacob 
Seitz last and let me know whether he was well. The fol- 
lowing week I engaged Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane to come to 
my residence in Brooklyn, and also had invited Dr. George 
Beard, the well-known nerve and brain specialist ; Prof. E. P. 
Thwing, an accomplished amateur hypnotist, and several 
other people of note. I had received meanwhile a letter 
from my sister in Springfield, in which she said that my 
uncle Jacob Seitz was well, she having seen him the " day 
before." This letter was signed "Kate." I put it in my 
pocket to bring out at the proper time as a crusher against 
the pretended spirit. We had present two mediums on that 
occasion. After a number of communications by raps 
through Mrs. Kane, there came the easily recognizable 
double rap of Seitz. I asked : " Who is this ? " Mrs. Kane 
wrote on a small blackboard which I had in the room a mes- 
sage signed "J. Seitz." I said: "Is this my uncle, J. 
Seitz.-*" "Yes." "How long ago is it that you died.''" 
Immediately she wrote : " You are not so smart as you think 
you are. That letter you have in your pocket signed ' Kate ' 
is a lie. J. Seitz." 

From that evening I never heard that double knock nor 
had I another message from my "uncle, J. Seitz." 

I have never been able to account satisfactorily to my 
own mind for this strange experience. Neither fraud nor 
coincidence fully covers the facts; nor does Mr. Hudson's 
theory of the subjective mind, for to my mind Mr. Seitz was 
living, and in fact was alive. The fact that he was alive 
also tells somewhat against the spiritualistic hypothesis. 
The hypothesis of a tricking or jesting intelligence outside 
,of the body covers the facts better than any other theory. 
But this theory jars on our notions of the propriety that 
should reign in the spirit realms, yet there are any number 
of spirits in the body who would delight in playing such 
pranks, and are we quite sure that there is anything in death 



PROFESSOR JAMES'S EXPERIMENTS 241 

to change character? In this world, as many spirit controls 
reminded us (see Part I. of this book), character is a growth; 
why not in the next ? There were lying spirits who could 
speak through men in the days of Christ and the prophets. 
Is it altogether absurd to believe that such spirits still exist 
and still have this power? At this time Mrs. Margaret Fox 
Kane was so given to debasing appetites that she was an easy 
doorway for this class of spirits, if the theory of Spiritualism 
be true. 

But does some one remind me that Mrs. Margaret Fox 
Kane, not long before her death, confessed that she and her 
sisters had duped the public, that the phenomena of raps, 
etc., which were manifested through them were produced by 
the snapping of joints, etc. ? I know all this, knew of this 
theory at the time of my experiments through her ; but I also 
know that so low had this unfortunate woman sunk that for 
five dollars she would have denied her mother, sworn to any- 
thing. At that time her affidavit for or against anything 
should not be given the slightest weight. 

Experiments of Professor James, of Harvard Uni- 
versity, WITH Mrs. Piper 

Many Inexplicable Phenomena — Names of Relatives Told — 
Professor James is Convinced that She has Supernormal 
Powers — He Abandons the Fraud and Coincidence Theories 
— Facts Given Right tvhen the Professors Memory was 
Wrong — " Hardly Ever Made a Mistake " 

One of the best-known psychologists in the world, if not 
the best known, is Prof. William James, of Harvard Univer- 
sity, author of " Principles of Psychology " and other books. 
He may be called justly the discoverer of Mrs. Piper, the 
celebrated medium, whom he introduced to the Society for 
Psychical Research, and who has now been investigating the 
phenomena she exhibits for fifteen years or more, having 

control of her whole time, and having had her under the 
16 



242 PLAYING ESPRIT FORT 

closest supervision of detectives, until there is no longer any 
question of her honesty. In 1 890, at the request of Frederic 
Myers, Professor James sent to the S. P. R. a record of his 
experiences with Mrs. Piper, which was published in the 
Proceedings.^ I give here copious extracts from this paper, 
repeating a paragraph or two which I have given on another 
page: 

"I made Mrs. Piper's acquaintance in the autumn of 
1885. My wife's mother, Mrs. Gibbens, had been told of 
her by a friend during the previous summer, and, never hav- 
ing seen a medium before, had paid her a visit out of curios- 
ity. She returned with the statement that Mrs. P. had given 
her a long string of names of members of the family, mostly 
Christian names, together with facts about the persons men- 
tioned and their relations to each other, the knowledge of 
which on her part was incomprehensible without supernor- 
mal powers. My sister-in-law went the next day, with still 
better results, as she related them. Among other things 
the medium had accurately described the circumstances of 
the writer of a letter which she held against her forehead, 
after Miss G. had given it to her. The letter was in Italian, 
and its writer was known to but two persons in this country. 

" [I may add that on a later occasion my wife and I took 
another letter from this same person to Mrs. P. , who went on 
to speak of him in a way which identified him unmistakably 
again. On a third occasion, two years later, my sister-in-law 
and I being again with Mrs. P., she reverted in her trance to 
these letters, and then gave us the writer's name, which she 
said she had not been able to get on the former occasion.] 

" But to revert to the beginning. I remember playing 
the esprit fort on that occasion before my feminine relatives, 
and seeking to explain by simple considerations the marvel- 
ous character of the facts which they brought back. This 
did not, however, prevent me from going myself a few days 
later, in company with my wife, to get a direct personal im- 
pression. The names of none of us up to this meeting had 
been announced to Mrs, P., and Mrs. J. and I were, of course, 
careful to make no reference to our relatives who had pre- 
ceded. The medium, however, when entranced, repeated 

J Vol. vi., pp.65i-g. 



SUPERNORMAL POWERS, SAYS JAMES 243 

most of the names of ' spirits ' whom she had announced on 
the two former occasions and added others. The names 
came with difficulty, and were only gradually made perfect. 
My wife's father's name of Gibbens was announced first as 
Niblin, then as Giblin, A child Herman (whom we had 
lost the previous year) had his name spelt out as Herrin. I 
think that in no case were both Christian and surnames 
given on this visit. But the facts predicated of the persons 
named made it in many instances impossible not to recognize 
the particular individuals who were talked about. We took 
particular pains on this occasion to give the Phinuit ^ control 
no help over his difficulties and to ask no leading questions. 
In the light of subsequent experience I believe this not to be 
the best policy. For it often happens, if you give this 
trance-personage a name or some small fact for the lack of 
which he is brought to a standstill, that he will then start 
off with a copious flow of additional talk, containing in itself 
an abundance of ' tests.' 

" My impression after this first visit was that Mrs. P. was 
either possessed of supernormal powers or knew the members 
of my wife's family by sight and had by some lucky coinci- 
dence become acquainted with such a multitude of their do- 
mestic circumstances as to produce the startling impression 
which she did. My later knowledge of her sittings and per- 
sonal acquaintance with her has led me absolutely to reject 
the latter explanation and to believe that she has supernor- 
mal powers. 

" I visited her a dozen times that winter, sometimes alone, 
sometimes with my wife, once in company with the Rev. M. 
J. Savage. I sent a large number of persons to her, wishing 
to get the results of as many first sittings as possible, I 
made appointments myself for most of these people, whose 
names were in no instance announced to the medium. . . . 

" The details of these sittings would prove nothing to the 
reader, unless printed in extenso, with full notes by the sit- 
ters. It reverts, after all, to personal conviction. My own 
conviction is not evidence, but it seems fitting to record it. 
I am persuaded of the medium's honesty and of the genuine- 
ness of her trance; and, altho at first disposed to think 
that the * hits ' she made were either lucky coincidences or 

' Phinuit is the name of the early control of Mrs. P. He has since been replaced 
by " Imperator," and much more satisfactory results hare followed. 



244 EXTRAORDINARY MEMORY 

the result of knowledge on her part of who the sitter was and 
of his or her family affairs, I now believe her to be in posses- 
sion of a power as yet unexplained. . . . 

" In the fall of 1889 she paid us a visit of a week at our 
country house in New Hampshire, and I then learned to know 
her personally better than ever before, and had confirmed in 
me the belief that she is an absolutely simple and genuine 
person. No one, when challenged, can give ' evidence ' to 
others for such beliefs as this. Yet we all live by them 
from day to day, and practically I should be willing now to 
stake as much money on Mrs. Piper's honesty as on that of 
any one I know, and am quite satisfied to leave my reputa- 
tion for wisdom or folly, so far as human nature is concerned, 
to stand or fall by this declaration. . . . 

" The most remarkable thing about the Phinuit personal- 
ity seems to me the extraordinary tenacity and minuteness of 
his memory. The medium has been visited by many hun- 
dreds of sitters, half of them, perhaps, being strangers who 
have come but once. To each Phinuit gives an hour full of 
disconnected fragments of talk about persons living, dead, or 
imaginary, and events past, future, or unreal. What normal 
waking memory could keep this chaotic mass of stuff together ? 
Yet Phinuit does so ; for the chances seem to be that if a 
sitter should go back after years of interval, the medium, 
when once entranced, would recall the minutest incidents of 
the earlier interview, and begin by recapitulating much of 
what had then been said. So far as I can discover, Mrs. 
Piper's waking memory is not remarkable, and the whole 
constitution of her trance-memory is something which I am 
at a loss to understand." . . . 

The spirit of an aunt of Professor James claimed at times 
to take control of the medium instead of Phinuit, and then 
the results were better. On one occasion the spirit aunt 
spoke of the 

" condition of health of two members of the family in New 
York, of which we knew nothing at the time, and which was 
afterward corroborated by letter. We have repeatedly heard 
from Mrs. Piper in trance things of which we were not at the 
moment aware. If the supernormal element in the phenom- 
enon be thought-transference, it is certainly not that of the 



"CONVINCING THINGS" 245 

sitter's conscious thought. It is rather the reservoir of his 
potential knowledge which is tapped ; and not always tJiat, 
but the knowledge of some distant living person, as in the 
incident last quoted. It has sometimes even seemed to me 
that too much intentness on the sitter's part to have Phinuit 
say a certain thing acts as a hindrance. . . . 

" I was told by Mrs. P. that the spirit of a boy named 
Robert F. was the companion of my lost infant. The F.'s 
were cousins of my wife living in a distant city. On my 
return home I mentioned the incident to my wife, saying, 
' Your cousin did lose a baby, didn't she } but Mrs. Piper 
was wrong about its sex, name, and age.' I then learned 
that Mrs. Piper had been quite right in all those particulars, 
and that mine was the wrong impression. . . . On my 
mother-in-law's second visit to the medium she was told that 
one of her daughters was suffering from a severe pain in her 
back on that day. This altogether unusual occurrence, un- 
known to the sitter, proved to be true. The announcement 
to my wife and brother of my aunt's death in New York be- 
fore we had received the telegram (Mr. Hodgson has, I be- 
lieve, sent you an account of this) may, on the other hand, 
have been occasioned by the sitters' conscious apprehension 
of the event. This particular incident is a * test ' of the sort 
which one readily quotes ; but to my mind it was far less 
convincing than the innumerable small domestic matters of 
which Mrs. Piper incessantly talked in her sittings with 
members of my family. With the affairs of my wife's ma- 
ternal kinsfolk in particular her acquaintance in trance was 
most intimate. Some of them were dead, some in Cali- 
fornia, some in the State of Maine. She characterized them 
all, living as well as deceased, spoke of their relations to 
each other, of their likes and dislikes, of their as yet unpub- 
lished practical plans, and hardly ever made a mistake, tho, 
as usual, there was very little system or continuity in any- 
thing that came out. A normal person, unacquainted with 
the family, could not possibly have said as much; one 
acquainted with it could hardly have avoided saying more. 

" The most convincing things said about my own imme- 
diate household were either very intimate or very trivial. 
Unfortunately the former things can not well be published. 
Of the trivial things I have forgotten the greater number, 
but the following, rar(2 nantes, may serve as samples of their 



246 "LITTLE BILLY-BOY" 

class : She said that we had lost recently a rug, and I a waist- 
coat. [She wrongly accused a person of stealing the rug, 
which was afterward found in the house.] She told of my 
killing a gray -and- white cat with ether, and described how it 
had ' spun round and round ' before dying. She told how my 
New York aunt had written a letter to my wife, warning her 
against all mediums, and then went off on a most amusing 
criticism, full of traits vifs, of the excellent woman's charac- 
ter. [Of course no one but my wife and I knew the exist- 
ence of the letter in question.] She was strong on the 
events in our nursery, and gave striking advice during our 
first visit to her about the way to deal with certain * tantrums ' 
of our second child, ' little Billy-boy,' as she called him, re- 
producing his nursery name. She told how the crib creaked 
at night, how a certain rocking-chair creaked mysteriously, 
how my wife had heard footsteps on the stairs, etc. Insig- 
nificant as these things sound when read, the accumulation 
of a large number of them has an irresistible effect. And 
I repeat again what I said before, that, taking everything that 
I know of Mrs, P. into account, the result is to make me feel 
as absolutely certain as I am of any personal fact in the 
world that she knows things in her trances which she can 
not possibly have heard in her waking state, and that the 
definitive philosophy of her trances is yet to be found. The 
limitations of her trance-information, its discontinuity and 
fitfulness, and its apparent inability to develop beyond a cer- 
tain point, altho they end by rousing one's moral and human 
impatience with the phenomenon, yet are, from a scientific 
point of view, among its most interesting peculiarities, since 
where there are limits there are conditions, and the discov- 
ery of these is always the beginning of explanation." 

Frederic Myers's Experiences with Mrs. Piper ^ 

"Mrs. Piper's case has been more or less continuously 
observed by Professor James and others almost from the date 
of the first sudden inception of the trance, some five years 
ago [written in 1890]. Mr. Hodgson has been in the habit 
of bringing acquaintances of his own to Mrs. Piper, without 
giving their names ; and many of these have heard from the 
trance-utterance facts about their dead relations, etc., which 

^ S. p. R., Proceedings, vol. vi., pp. 436-42. December, 1890. 



DETECTIVES WATCH MRS. PIPER 247 

they feel sure that Mrs. Piper could not have known. Mr. 
Hodgson also had Mr. and Mrs, Piper watched or ' shadowed' 
by private detectives for some weeks, with the view of dis- 
covering whether Mr. Piper (who is employed in a large 
store in Boston, U. S. A.) went about inquiring into the 
affairs of possible ' sitters,' or whether Mrs. Piper received 
letters from friends or agents conveying information. This 
inquiry was pushed pretty closely, but absolutely nothing 
was discovered which could throw suspicion on Mrs. Piper — 
who is now aware of the procedure, but has the good sense 
to recognize the legitimacy — I may say the scientific neces- 
sity — of this kind of probation. 

" It was thus shown that Mrs. Piper made no discoverable 
attempt to acquire knowledge even about persons whose com- 
ing she had reason to expect. Still less could she have been 
aware of the private concerns of persons brought anonymously 
to her house at Mr, Hodgson's choice. And a yet further 
obstacle to such clandestine knowledge was introduced by 
her removal to England — at our request — in November, 
1889. Professor Lodge [Sir Oliver Lodge] met her on the 
Liverpool landing-stage, November 19, and conducted her 
to a hotel, where I joined her on November 20, and es- 
corted her and her children to Cambridge. She stayed first 
in my house; and I am convinced that she brought with her 
a very slender knowledge of English affairs or English people. 
The servant who attended on her and on her two young 
children was chosen by myself, and was a young woman from 
a country village whom I had full reason to believe to be 
both trustworthy and also quite ignorant of my own or my 
friends' affairs. For the most part I had myself not deter- 
mined upon the persons whom I would invite to sit with her. 
I chose these sitters in great measure by chance; several of 
them were not resident in Cambridge ; and (except in one or 
two cases where anonymity would have been hard to preserve) 
I brought them to her under false names — sometimes intro- 
ducing them only when the trance had already begun. 

" In one sitting, for instance, which will be cited below, 
I learned by accident that a certain lady, here styled Mrs. A,, 
was in Cambridge ; a private lady, not a member of the So- 
ciety for Psychical Research, who had never before visited 
my house and whose name had certainly never been men- 
tioned before Mrs. Piper. I introduced this lady as Mrs. 



248 MRS. PIPER IN ENGLAND 

Smith ; and I think that, when the reader is estimating the 
correct facts which were told to her, he may at any rate dis- 
miss from his mind the notion that Mrs. Piper had been able 
either to divine that these facts would be wanted, or to get 
at them even if she had known that her success depended on 
their production on that day. 

" Mrs. Piper while in England was twice in Cambridge, 
twice in London, and twice in Liverpool, at dates arranged 
by ourselves; her sitters (almost always introduced under 
false names) belonged to several quite different social groups, 
and were frequently unacquainted with each other. Her 
correspondence was addressed to my care, and I believe that 
almost every letter which she received was shown to one or 
other of us. When in London she stayed in lodgings which 
we selected; when at Liverpool, in Professor Lodge's house; 
and when at Cambridge, in Professor Sidgwick's or my own. 
No one of her hosts or of her hosts' wives detected any sus- 
picious act or word. 

" We took great pains to avoid giving information in 
talk; and a more complete security is to be found in the 
fact that we were ourselves ignorant of many of the facts 
given as to our friends' relations, etc. In the case of Mrs, 
Verrall, for instance (cited below), no one in Cambridge ex- 
cept Mrs. Verrall herself could have supplied the bulk of the 
information given ; and some of the facts given (as will be 
seen) Mrs. Verrall herself did not know. As regards my own 
affairs, I have not thought it worth while to cite in extenso 
such statements as might possibly have been got up before- 
hand, since Mrs. Piper of course knew that I should be one 
of her sitters. Such facts as that I once had an aunt, * Cor- 
delia Marshall, more commonly called Corrie,' might have 
been learned — tho I do not think that they were learned — 
from printed or other sources. But I do not think that any 
larger proportion of such accessible facts was given to me 
than to an average sitter previously unknown ; nor were there 
any of those subtler points which could so easily have been 
made by dint of scrutiny of my books or papers. On the 
other hand, in my case, as in the case of several other sitters, 
there were messages purporting to come from a friend who 
has been dead many years, and mentioning circumstances 
which I believe that it would have been quite impossible for 
Mrs. Piper to have discovered. 



NO FRAUD 



249 



" I am also acquainted with some of the facts given to 
other sitters, and suppressed as too intimate or as involving 
secrets not the property of the sitter alone. I may say that, 
so far as my own personal conviction goes, the utterance of 
one or two of these facts is even more conclusive of super- 
normal knowledge than the correct statement of dozens of 
names of relations, etc., which the sitter had no personal mo- 
tive for concealing. 

" On the whole, I believe that all observers, both in 
America and in England, who have seen enough of Mrs. 
Piper in both states to be able to form a judgment, will agree 
in affirming (i) that many of the facts given could not have 
been learned even by a skilled detective ; (2) that to learn 
others of them, altho possible, would have needed an expendi- 
ture of mone}/ as well as of time which it seems impossible 
to suppose that Mrs. Piper could have met ; and (3) that her 
conduct has never given any ground whatever for supposing 
her capable of fraud or trickery. Few persons have been so 
long and so carefully observed ; and she has left on all ob- 
servers the impression of thorough uprightness, candor, and 
honesty. 

" Less than this it would not be fair to say. But, on the 
other hand, it must be remembered that the personal honesty 
of Mrs. Piper, in the waking state, covers only a part of our 
difficulties. We are dealing with an honest subject and with 
a genuine trance, but it by no means follows that the trance- 
personality is as honest as the waking one. Analogy would 
be against such an assumption. It may be remembered that 
in Mr. and Mrs. Newnham's case of thought-transference, 
manifested by planchette- writing,' the unconscious self of 
Mrs. Newnham, which in some way learned the questions 
which Mr. Newnham was writing down, exhibited at times 
a trickiness and a pretension to knowledge that it did not 
possess, which were quite foreign to Mrs. Newnham's con- 
scious mind. With other automatic messages — whether con- 
veyed by table-tilting, planchette-writing, or ordinary auto- 
matic script — the case is much the same. Even tho the 
messages may usually seem straightforward enough, times 
will come when the responses degenerate — when silly jokes, 
or manifest untruths, or violent expressions are written, 
perhaps, over and over again. This seems to go with 

1 " Phantasms of the Living," vol. i., p. 63. 



250 CONTROL "FISHING" 

fatigue in the automatist, and to show some want of coor- 
dination. 

" Mrs. Piper's trance condition is markedly subject to 
these forms of degeneration. As will be more fully described 
later on, she passes with slight convulsions into a condition 
in which a personality calling itself ' Dr. Phinuit ' comes to 
the front. And ' Phinuit ' — to use his own appellation for 
brevity's sake — is by no means above * fishing.' His ways 
of extracting information from the sitter, under the guise of 
giving it, will be described in detail by Mr. Leaf. Different 
trances, and different parts of the same trance, varied greatly 
in quality. There were some interviews throughout which 
Phinuit hardly asked any question, and hardly stated anything 
which was not true. There were others throughout which 
his utterances showed not one glimmer of real knowledge, but 
consisted wholly of fishing questions and random assertions. 
" These trances can not always be induced at pleasure. 
A state of quiet expectancy or * self-suggestion ' will usually 
bring one on; but sometimes the attempt altogether fails. 
We never attempted to induce the trance by hypnotism. I 
understand, indeed, that Mrs. Piper has never been deeply 
hypnotized, altho Professor Richet tried on her some experi- 
ments of suggestion in the waking state and found her some- 
what ' suggestible. ' On the other hand, the trance has occa- 
sionally appeared when it was not desired. The first time 
that it occurred (as Mrs. Piper informs us), it came as an 
unwelcome surprise. And Mrs. Piper believes — our evidence 
lies in her own inference from her own sensations — that the 
access has several times come upon her during sleep, ex- 
hausting her for the succeeding day. An instance of this 
kind occurred at Cambridge. Before going to bed she had, 
at my request, and for the first time in her life, been looking 
into a crystal, with the desire to see therein some hallucina- 
tory figure which might throw light on the nature of the 
mysterious secondary personality. She saw nothing; but 
next morning she looked exhausted, and said that she thought 
that she had had an access during the night. The next time 
that she went into a trance Phinuit said he had come and 
called, and no one had answered him. It appeared as if 
the concentration of thought upon the crystal had acted as a 
kind of self-suggestion, and had induced the secondary state 
when not desired. 



DR. SAVAGE AND MRS. PIPER 



251 



" The trance when induced generally lasted about an 
hour. On one occasion in ray house, and I believe once at 
least in America, it lasted only for about a minute. Phinuit 
only had time to say that he could not remain, and then the 
habitual moaning began, and Mrs. Piper came to herself. 

" There was often a marked difference between the first 
few minutes of a trance and the remaining time. On such 
occasions almost all that was of value would be told in the 
first few minutes ; and the remaining talk would consist of 
vague generalities or mere repetitions of what had already 
been given. Phinuit, as will be seen, always professed him- 
self to be a spirit communicating with spirits ; and he used 
to say that he remembered their messages for a few minutes 
after * entering into the medium,' and then became confused. 
He was not, however, apparently able to depart when his 
budget of facts was empty. There seemed to be some irre- 
sponsible letting-o£f of energy which must continue until 
the original impulse was lost in incoherence." 

Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage's Experience with Mrs. 

Piper 

Dr. Savage has packed his little book, recently issued, 
" Can Telepathy Explain .■• " with most impressive phenomena. 
Every one interested in this subject should read this book, 
for Dr. Savage is a close observer and is a man of excellent 
judgment and of unquestioned integrity. 

The following two incidents illustrate his experience with 
Mrs. Piper : * 

Dr. Savage s First Sitting with Mrs. Piper 

" I had sittings with Mrs. Piper years ago, before the 
society was organized or her name was publicly known. On 
the occasion of my first visit to her, she was, I think, in a 
little house on Pinckney Street in Boston. At this time she 
went into a trance, but talked instead of writing. The first 
person who claimed to be present was my father. He had 
died in Maine at the age of ninety. He had never lived in 
Boston, nor, indeed, had he visited there for a great many 

1 " Can Telepathy Explain ? " pp. 73-78. 



252 "HE CALLS YOU JUDSON " 

years, so that there was no possibility that Mrs. Piper should 
ever have seen him and no likelihood of her having known 
anything about him. She described him at once with accu- 
racy, pointing out certain peculiarities which the ordinary 
observer, even if he had ever seen him, would not have been 
likely to notice. Without any question on my part, she told 
me that it was my father, and added : * He calls you Judson. ' 
This, tho a little fact, is striking enough to call for notice. 
Judson is my middle name. It had been given me when I 
was born, at the request of my father's daughter, a half-sis- 
ter. She, however, had died suddenly in another State and 
had never seen me. In all my boyhood all the members of 
the family except my father and my half-brother, soon to be 
referred to, had always called me Minot. Father had called 
me Judson through my boyhood, as I always supposed, out of 
a tender feeling for the daughter who had given me the name. 
For fifteen or twenty years, however, before his death he had 
fallen into the family way and had also called me Minot. 
It struck me, then, as peculiar and worthy of note that Mrs. 
Piper should actually describe him, and, among other per- 
sonal peculiarities which she mentioned, should have called 
up this tiny fact from the oblivion of the past. She went on 
to say : ' Here is somebody else besides your father. It is 
your brother — no, your half-brother, and he says his name is 
John.' This John was my mother's boy. Then Mrs. Piper 
went on to describe with somewhat painful accuracy, partly 
in pantomime and partly by speech, the method of his death; 
and she added : * When he was dying, how he did want to see 
his mother ! ' Now this half-brother John had also been in 
the habit of calling me Judson in the years long past. It 
had been a good many years since I had seen him. He had 
never lived in Boston, and there is no conceivable way by 
which Mrs. Piper could have known anything about him. 
He was not consciously in my mind, and I was not expecting 
to hear from him. He had died a year or two before this in 
Michigan, in precisely the way in which the medium had 
described the facts. As to his exclamation about his mother, 
it came to me as peculiarly personal and appropriate, because 
he was one of those who would be spoken of as a ' mother- 
boy.' He was passionately devoted to her." 



ACCURATE CLAIRVOYANCE 253 

Dr. Savage s Datighter' s Experience 

" Mrs. Piper moved from the west end of Boston to a 
house in Roxbury. My daughter made an engagement for 
a sitting with her. She did this through a friend who was 
living in Roxbury, having this friend write the letter making 
the appointment, and having the reply come to her house 
under an assumed name, at least two miles away from where 
I was living then. My daughter went to meet the appoint- 
ment, of course utterly unknown. A friend gave her three 
locks of hair. She placed them in a book, one at the front, 
one at the back, and one in the middle, so that they should 
not come in contact with each other. She knew nothing 
about them, not even as to whether they had been cut from 
the heads of people living or dead. After Mrs. Piper had 
gone into a trance, these locks of hair were placed in her 
hand, one after another. She told all about them, gave the 
names, the name of the friend who had asked my daughter to 
bring them, told whose heads they were from, whether they 
were dead or living, and in regard to one of them asked why 
they had cut it off at the extreme end of the hair where it 
was lifeless, instead of taking a lock nearer the head. My 
daughter of course did not know whether any of the names 
given or the statements made were correct or not. She made 
notes, however, and found that Mrs, Piper had been accurate 
in every particular." 

How shall we explain this strange power of Mrs. Piper 
and certain other psychics as revealed in experiments of this 
sort."* Is it mind-reading.'' Possibly; but note, my niece 
when she called upon the New York psychic did not know 
what was in my envelopes, nor did the medium know her. 
To explain by Hudson's " law of psychic phenomena," that is, 
by the law of mind-reading (it is mind-reading whether it be 
done by the subjective mind or the conscious mind), the me- 
dium first had to get the fact that I sent the letters from my 
niece's mind and then had to find me and read the thoughts 
in my mind. Mrs. Piper, in the experience of Dr. Savage's 
daughter, could not have found out the facts as to th-e owner 
of the locks of hair by reading the mind of tke sitter, but 



254 SEVERE TESTS 

could have found out the name and address of the person 
who gave her these locks, and then the mind of Mrs. Piper 
would have had the task of discovering the whereabouts of 
this woman, and then of rummaging through the millions of 
cells of her memories for these facts — all this she would have 
had to perform almost instantaneously. This theory clothes 
the mind of a medium with well-nigh omniscience. 

A theory to explain must explain all the facts of the class 
to be valid. 

Take such other facts as these which Dr. Savage gives 
out of his own experience. He said to a spirit' that was 
writing through the hand of a young man : 

" If you are really a person and are really here, you ought 
to be able to go somewhere in the city for me, find out some- 
thing at my request, return, and tell me about it. " 

The spirit said he had never done anything of the kind, 
but would try. Dr. Savage sent him to his own house to find 
out what Mrs. Savage was doing. Mrs. Savage had told the 
doctor before he left home that morning that she would be 
away all forenoon. In four or five minutes the spirit re- 
turned and said : " Mrs. Savage was at home, and when I 
was there she was standing in the front hall saying good-by 
to a caller." The doctor believed that she was anywhere 
but home. Yet it turned out that a caller had come and Mrs, 
S. did not go elsewhere as she had expected ; and on compar- 
ing notes Dr. Savage found that at the time that the spirit 
said he called she was saying good-by to her guest. 

Remember that this is not hearsay. It is not the talk of 
an uneducated or emotional man, but the talk of an experi- 
enced observer of psychic phenomena, well known to the 
world, and he tells it out of his own personal experience. 

Here is another case that Dr. Savage, in this same little 
book, relates that is even more wonderful : 

I " Can Telepathy Explain ? " pp. 93, 94. 



A SPIRIT REPORTER 



Report of a Friend Two Htmdred Miles Away 



2SS 



" I have already stated one case in which the invisible 
intelligence acts at my request to find out something and 
report to me. I wish now to give another illustration of the 
same kind, only more remarkable still. I was sitting with a 
friend in my study in Boston. This friend, tho having 
psychic sensitiveness, was not in a professional sense a 
medium. She did not go into a trance, but was in her nor- 
mal condition. The communications were made chiefly 
through automatic writing. The intelligence at work claimed 
to be the spirit of a friend of mine who had recently died, 
but who during her life had lived in a town on the Kennebec 
River in Maine. She had a sister still living in this same 
town. It occurred to me to make this test, and I explained 
what it was which I wanted. I asked her if she knew where 
her sister was at the time. She answered that she did not, 
and had no way of knowing, unless she could go or send and 
find out. I then asked her if she would not try to find out 
for me while I waited. The answer being in the affirmative, 
we sat in perfect silence and quiet for nearly fifteen minutes, 
when the influence appeared again and the hand began to 
write. She said she had been to Maine, and told me dis- 
tinctly and clearly where the sister was, and what she was 
doing. And here let me ask careful attention to the fact that 
there were conditions in the family with which I was ac- 
quainted, which led me to believe that the sister at this time 
would probably be in another town ; so that the answer was 
directly opposed to my expectation. It seems to me that 
this has a bearing on the theory of telepathy as explaining 
matters of this kind. I immediately wrote a letter to Maine, 
and had the correctness of the statement made to me cor- 
roborated in every particular by return mail." 

Dr. Savage, in his various writings, records more won- 
derful experiences than these which I have given. He has 
reached the conclusion, he tells us, that telepathy can not ex- 
plain all of these psychic facts ; that we must look to actual 
spirit communication for the true explanation of some of these 
phenomena. 

Is Dr. Savage right in this conclusion ? 



256 SIR WILLIAM CROOKES'S TEST 

Reading from Books without the Use of the Eyes 

Sir William Crookes, the well-known English scientist, 
tells the following experiment he made that well illustrates 
this remarkable gift of sight independent of the eyes : ^ 

" A lady was writing automatically by means of the 
planchette. I was trying to devise a means of proving that 
what she wrote was not due to * unconscious cerebration,' 
The planchette, as it always does, insisted that, altho it was 
moved by the hand and arm of the lady, the intelligence was 
that of an invisible being who was playing on her brain as 
on a musical instrument, and thus moving her muscles. I 
therefore said to this intelligence : * Can you see the contents 
of this room ? ' ' Yes,' wrote the planchette. ' Can you see 
to read this newspaper } ' said I, putting my finger on a copy 
of Tlie Times, which was on a table behind me, but without 
looking at it. ' Yes,' was the reply of the planchette. 
' Well,' I said, * if you can see that, write the word which is 
now covered by my finger, and I will believe you. ' The 
planchette commenced to move. Slowly and with great diffi- 
culty the word ' however ' was written, I turned round and 
saw that the word ' however ' was covered by the tip of my 
finger. 

" I had purposely avoided looking at the newspaper when 
I tried this experiment, and it was impossible for the lady, 
had she tried, to have seen any of the printed words, for she 
was sitting at one table, and the paper was on another table 
behind, my body intervening." 

My friend, Mrs. Judge C, of New York, is an intimate 
friend of Mollie Fancher, the famous invalid clairvoyant of 
Brooklyn. She tells me that again and again Miss Fancher 
has read for her from letters and books when she purposely 
kept the writing or print so that she could not see it. 

Rev. Stanton Moses, the great English medium, whose 
integrity has never been questioned to my knowledge, and is 
strongly vouched for by Frederic Myers in his book, " Hu- 
man Personality," gives the following interesting account of 

• Crookes's "Researches in Spiritualism," pp.95, 96. 



SPIRIT IDENTIFIES HIMSELF 257 

a dialog he had with spirits which resulted in the reading 
of sentences in books which were closed and under test 
conditions : ^ 

'* Already several facts and precise records of the life of 
some spirits had been given. For instance, on May 22, I 
was writing on quite another subject when the message broke 
off and the name of Thomas Augustine Arne was written. 
It was said that he had been brought into relation with me 
through his connection with a son of Dr. Speer's, a pupil of 
mine, who displayed great musical ability. 

" I was at this time greatly impressed with the character 
of the automatic writing and with the information given. I 
inquired at once if I could ascertain from Arne, through the 
medium of the spirit doctor, who was writing, any precise 
facts as to his life. The request was at once complied with, 
there being no interval between m.y question and the reply. 
The date of his birth (1710); his school (Eton); his in- 
structor in the violin (Festing) ; his works, or at any rate 
some eight or nine of them ; the fact that * Rule Britannia ' 
was contained in the masque of Alfred; and a number of 
other minute particulars were given without the least hesita- 
tion. Profoundly astonished at receiving such a mass of 
information, foreign not only to my mind in its details, but 
utterly foreign to my habit of thought — for I know abso- 
lutely nothing about music, and have read nothing on the 
subject — I inquired how it was possible to give information 
so minute. It was said to be extremely difficult, possible 
only when an extremely passive and receptive state in the 
medium were secured. Moreover, spirits were said to have 
access to sources of information so that they could refresh 
their imperfect recollection. 

"I asked how.? By reading; under certain conditions, 
atod with special end in view ; or by inquiry, as man does, 
only to spirits it would be more difficult, tho possible. 

" Could my friend himself so acquire information ? No ; 
he had too long left the earth, but he mentioned the names 
of two spirits accustomed occasionally to write, who could 
perform this feat. I asked that one of them should be 
brought. I was sitting waiting for a pupil in a room, not 

I " Spirit Teachings," M.A. (Oxon.), pp. 31-33. 
17 



258 SUCCESSFUL READING TEST 

my own, which was used as a study, and the walls of which 
were covered with bookshelves. 

" The writing ceased, and after an interval of some min- 
utes, another kind of writing appeared. I inquired if the 
newly arrived spirit could demonstrate to me the power 
alleged. 

" ' Can you read .-* ' 

" ' No, friend, I can not ; but Zachary Gray can, and 
Rector. I am not able to materialize myself or to command 
the elements.' 

" ' Are either of those spirits here .-* ' 

" ' I will bring one by and by. I will send. . . . Rector 
is here.' 

" ' I am told you can read. Is that so .-* Can you read 
a book ? ' 

" [Spirit handwriting changed.] 

" ' Yes, friend, with difficulty.' 

" ' Will you write for me the last line of the first book of 
the ^neid ? ' 

Wait — " Omnibus errantem terris et flitctibus cEstas!' ' 
[This was right] 
Quite so. But I might have known it. Can you go to 
the bookcase, take the last book but one on the second shelf, 
and read me the last paragraph on the ninety-fourth page .'' 
I have not seen it, and do not even know its name.' 

" ' " I will curtly prove, by a short historical narrative, 
that popery is a novelty and has gradually arisen or grown 
up since the primitive and pure time of Christianity, not only 
since the apostolic age, but even since the lamentable union 
of kirk and the state by Constantine." ' 

" [The book on examination then proved to be a queer 
one called ' Roger's Antipopopriestian, an attempt to liberate 
and purify Christianity from Popery, Politikirkality, and 
Priestrule.' The extract given above was accurate, but the 
word ' narrative ' was substituted for ' account. '] 

" ' How came I to pitch on so appropriate a sentence ? ' 

" ' I know not, my friend. It was by coincidence. The 
word was changed by error. I knew it when it was done, 
but would not change.' 

" ' How do you read .'' You wrote more slowly, and by 
fits and starts. ' 

" ' I wrote what I remembered, and then I went for more. 



(C ( 



(( ( 



"TO HIM BE GLORY" 259 

It is a special effort to read, and useful only as a test. 
Your friend was right last night : we can read, but only when 
conditions are very good. We will read once again, and 
write, and then impress you of the book : " Pope is the last 
great writer of that school of poetry, the poetry of the intel- 
lect, or rather of the intellect mingled with the fancy." 
That is truly written. Go and take the eleventh book on 
the same shelf. [I took a book called " Poetry, Romance, 
and Rhetoric."] It will open at the page for you. Take it 
and read, and recognize our power, and the permission which 
the great and good God gives us, to show you of our power 
over matter. To Him be glory. Amen. ' 

" [The book opened at page 145, and there was the quota- 
tion perfectly true. I had not seen the book before ; cer- 
tainly had no idea of its contents.] " 

Personal Experiences of Ex- Judge Abram H. Dailey, 
New York City 

T^e Burning of a Friend's House Described by a Spirit — Re- 
markable Verification of the Earth History of Two Spirits 
— Does this Prove Personal Identity ? 

Judge Dailey is a well-known lawyer in New York City 
and has served a term on the bench ; president of the Medico- 
Legal Society of New York (vice-chairman of the Psycho- 
logical Section) ; vice-president of the American Congress of 
Tuberculosis, etc. He is a gentleman with whom I am well 
acquainted, having been his fellow citizen in Brooklyn for a 
quarter of a century, and I esteem him to be a man whose 
character is above reproach. I have been a frequent visitor 
at the judge's house, and he has given me some remarkable 
personal experiences.' I purpose to give several incidents 
that have occurred under the judge's own eye, and to relate 
them in his own language, without the change of a word. 
There is no room for fraud or for inaccuracy of statement. 

' ■' Something over twenty years ago," says the judge in a pamphlet, ' Spirit- 
ism and Mrs. Leonora E. Piper,' "my wife became conscious of some unconscious 
manifestations in her presence, and suddenly developed clairvoyant and clairaudi- 
ent powers " 



26o DESCRIBING A DISTANT FIRE 

The judge is a trained lawyer and understands fully the force 
of evidence. 

" Some eighteen years ago," the judge says, " the medium 
and I were quite intimately acquainted with a Dr. Howard, 
his wife, and family. During our absence of a few weeks 
from the city, his wife had died, and had been some six weeks 
in the spiritual world at the time the incident I am relating 
occurred. The medium was entranced of one who had rep- 
resented herself as the spirit of a little girl, whose name was 
Daisy Crandall. She had come to us many times, and is 
still part of our spiritual family. Several friends were pres- 
ent when she spoke hurriedly, saying: 'Why, here is Mrs. 
Howard. She says she has just come from the doctor's 
house ; that the house is on fire, and that she was frightened, 
fearing that the old doctor would be burned up.' It was a 
pat statement and quite startling. I remarked : * I hope, 
Daisy, you are not mistaken, for you know very well that the 
medium knows nothing of what you say, and if it turns out 
that there was no fire there, it would be very annoying to 
her.' She became immediately indignant, and asked me if 
I supposed that Mrs. Howard would come there and tell a 
lie. I meekly replied : ' No, but I didn't know but that there 
might be a mistake. ' She reiterated that there was no mis- 
take. She believed what Mrs. Howard said. I said nothing 
of the occurrence until after the company had gone. When 
I told the medium of what had been said through her lips, 
while she had been entranced, she became very much excited 
— stamped her foot, and said that no control should put her 
in that position, for she did not believe there was a word 
of truth in the statement. She had hardly got the words 
from her mouth before the spirit returned, seizing control of 
her, and, sitting down, she burst into tears and said to me : 
' To-morrow morning I want you to harness the horse and 
carriage and take the medium down to Dr. Howard's house, 
and I will tell you just what you will find there. You will 
find that the fire-engines were there, that they put water in 
through the house, that it came down through the ceiling, 
that the bedding was on fire, and that they threw the mat- 
tresses in the backyard ; and say to her when I am gone that 
she must not question our truthfulness, for we do not lie. ' I 
did as requested. We drove down to Dr. Howard's. He 



"WE DO NOT LIE" 261 

lived in a brown-stone house on Bedford Avenue. As I 
drove up to the curbstone, there was no sign of fire in the 
front part of the building. The medium immediately ex- 
claimed: ' There, I told you so.' I said : 'Wait.' I ran up 
the steps and rang the bell at the door. The call was an- 
swered by the doctor himself, and the moment the door was 
opened the work of the flames and water was before me. 
The doctor at once stated that fire had broken out the night 
before, and he came near being burned up. I hurriedly ran 
through the hall of his house, looked out of the back window 
of the parlor, and the mattresses were still smoldering in 
the yard, and the ceilings were soaking with water." 

The above being wholly an experience with one who is 
not a professional medium, and on the word and honor of a 
well-known citizen of New York, it should be given great 
weight. 

The following is another very remarkable incident from 
Judge Dailey's personal experience : 

" In attempting to examine into the phenomena of the 
Spiritualists with a view to explain them and explode the 
spiritistic hypothesis, I became convinced, by some of the 
most startling phenomena occurring in my presence, which I 
shall not here describe. I became convinced of its supermun- 
dane source and that I was wrong, and, like Paul, I asked : 
' Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? ' The answer came : 
' Wait, and it will be shown to you. ' Some days later this 
lady became entranced in my presence by what claimed to 
be the spirit of a man who in this life was a sailor, who 
during the early part of the Rebellion had commanded a ves- 
sel in the government service ; he said he died in the early 
sixties, of asthmatic consumption, in the vicinity of New 
York, aged upward of sixty years. To certain questions 
which I put to him he refused to give me answers, but as to 
the place of his nativity, his relatives, many of the incidents 
and hardships of his early life, of his going out to sea on a 
whaling-ship from New Bedford when a little boy, of the 
brutality of his captain, of his leaving the ship in a foreign 
port and being taken up by another captain and taught navi- 
gation, and of numerous events in his life, he then told me. 



262 PROVING SPIRIT STATEMENTS 

He said he had been brought to the lady medium by a 
daughter of mine, who had been then a good many years in 
the spirit world, having died in infancy. That he came for 
the purpose of taking charge of the young medium, of giving 
to me counsel and warnings in so far as he was able, and that 
thereby he would help me and advance himself spiritually. 
He made plain to me what he required, but required that I 
should be as faithful to him as he would be to me. He 
required that I should be kind and charitable, that I should 
bear testim.ony to the truth as I found it to be. I have tried 
to do so, and I shall be astonished to find that I have been 
deceived and have been misleading others these many 
years. 

" Having now been for so many years living in the midst 
of convincing phenomena, and having thousands of times 
been wisely advised and deservedly censured and admonished 
by him, I did not take any steps to verify the truth of his 
statements as to his identity or any of the incidents of his 
early life until last September, when I went with this lady 
to New Bedford, Mass., for that express purpose. We had 
neither of us ever been there, and had no acquaintances in 
the town. You will pardon me, I hope, for being a little 
explicit, for in this experience I am confirmed in my position, 
and meet the argument of Dr. Hudson and other supporters 
of the telepathic theory. Having alighted from the train, we 
stepped aside, and I then said : ' Now, captain, we are in your 
hands, and we want you to do what you can to verify your 
statement.'' ' He immediately replied through the medium: 
' Do you realize what you ask of me? Do you consider that 
it is ninety years since I lived here ; that I went away when 
a little boy and seldom came back, and never to stay, and 
that I have been now away from here entirely over sixty 
years ; that all I ever knew here are dead long ago .'* Well, I 
will do the best I can. We lived in a place up back on the 
hill called Spruce Lane, now Spruce Street ; go there. ' I 
went to a coachman and asked him if there was a street 
called Spruce Lane or Spruce Street in the city. He said : 
* Yes, over back on the hill is a little street by that name.' 
We went then to a hotel and got our dinner, and while 
there he told us of the name of a former owner, and of the 
changes that had been made in the hotel. All was true. 
We then took a coach and drove to Spruce Street. On our 



GRAVEYARDS' STRONG TESTIMONY 261, 

way he pointed out, and said through the medium, that, where 
now are paved streets and blocks of houses, when he was a 
boy there were open lots, criss-crossed with paths. When 
we drove into Spruce Lane, he found all was changed ; the 
little house where he said he lived was gone. ' Go,' said he, 
' to the graveyards, first to the new one, and look at the tomb- 
stones. I will tell you the names before you go of some I 
knew and who are buried there.' He gave us the full names 
of those persons and the relations they bore to each other. 
Some of these persons he had mentioned to me in Brooklyn, 
more than twenty years before. We entered the cemetery 
and found them as he had given them to us. ' Now,' said 
he, ' go to the old Second Street cemetery where mother was 
buried.' I asked the driver if there was such a cemetery, 
and he said, ' Yes.' Now, twenty years before, in Brooklyn, 
he had told me of the sad life of his mother and of her death 
in want before poverty drove him to sea. He spoke of his 
devotion to her, and that when she died a friend by the name 
of Spooner had given her a burial-place in his family plot ; 
that stones were erected in the plot with the name of Spooner 
inscribed thereon, but that only a piece of board with her 
name was placed at the head of his mother's grave. When 
we reached the old cemetery we found it closed by a high 
fence and the gate locked, iDut, standing by the fence, he 
pointed out to us, one hundred feet or more away, the place 
of his mother's burial, and we could read the name of Spooner 
upon the stones in the plot he pointed to. On our way to 
the cemetery he told us that his mother attended a little 
Methodist church which we would pass, unless it too was 
gone. Directly we came to a new but small church, which 
had succeeded to the old one he had attended. Of that little 
church he had spoken many years before. We could only 
remain a few hours in New Bedford, and we anticipate going 
there again to complete the identification of this spirit, whose 
name while here was John Taylor, Taylor being a very com- 
mon family name in New Bedford. The first time this spirit 
came to me I was alone with the medium in Brooklyn. His 
existence was utterly unknown to us. To set the law of 
suggestion at work, there must be a suggester. Who was 
the suggester in this case .-' I claim to have obtained some 
evidence to corroborate his claim to having once lived in 
New Bedford. From whose subjective mind came the 



264 STRONG FACTS UNEXPLAINED 

idea to this lady of a sailor by the name of John Taylor, 
who was born in New Bedford, and all this story of his 
life? 

" I have stated a case of facts known neither to the me- 
dium nor to any person present ; those facts have, to a certain 
extent, been verified. Will the doctrine of telepathy account 
for it ? If it does, from whence did the telepathic thoughts 
proceed ? They must have originated in the mind of some 
absent or present person in mortal form, or from some absent 
or present being in invisible form. They could not have 
originated in either the mind of the medium or my own. In 
the absence of any other known method of communicating 
the name of this personality, and his having put in an ap- 
pearance declaring his identity and means of determining it, 
is there any presumption raised that he is what he purports 
to be ? It is true, the medium was not in her normal condi- 
tion when he first appeared. The question arises : Is that 
abnormal condition a manifestation that she is for the time 
being possessed of a separate intelligence ? The fact that 
truthful statements come through her lips concerning mat- 
ters of which neither she nor I ever had any knowledge is 
very conclusive evidence that the communications are from 
some other intelligence. If they are not from such a person- 
ality, the question is presented : Is it possible that the com- 
munication could have originated from any other source .'' If 
so, from what source .■• Has Dr. Hudson anywhere explained .'' 
If he can not explain, then the argument is against him and 
his various theories fail." 



This incident presents some very great difficulties for the 
subjective-mind hypothesis to overcome. It is a statement 
of facts not known to the medium nor any person present 
with her or known to her — a statement of facts many of 
which have been verified. For telepathy to explain it, there 
should be an explanation of how these thoughts were secured. 
In what mind did they originate .'' They did not originate 
in the mind of the medium or in the mind of Judge Dailey, 
or in the mind of any other known living person. As the 
judge asks: "In the absence of any other known source of 
this intelligence, the captain communicating the name of his 



A SPIRIT DOCTOR 265 

personality and his having put in an appearance, declaring 
his identity and means of determining it, is there not at 
least a strong presumption raised that he is what he purports 
to be? " The fact that the medium was not in her normal 
condition, does that or does it not indicate that she was pos- 
sessed of spirit intelligence? The statements that came 
through her lips were concerning matters of which she had 
no knowledge, and are conclusive evidence that the commu- 
nications were from some other intelligence. If from some 
other intelligence, then the question remains from what other 
intelligence. 

Among many other incidents which the Hon. Judge 
Dailey presents is the following : 

" Once a spirit entranced the same medium when she 
and I were alone, and announced himself as Dr. Morse, giv- 
ing his full name, and stating to me that he had died a num- 
ber of years before in the city of New Orleans, where he 
had lived and practised his profession, and where he had a 
family still living. He said that he had been prominently 
connected with the hospitals in New Orleans, and had a very 
extensive practise, saying that he probably had occasioned 
the death of some patients, but that he had assisted a great 
many and had done the best he could. I was not well at the 
time and the medium herself was in poor condition of health. 
He said that he had come to be of assistance to us, and, while 
he did not propose to interfere unless it was necessary with 
the treatment we were receiving, he would stand by and 
warn us of mistakes insofar as possible. He was very faith- 
ful in coming to us, and gave me very salutary advice in 
regard to my health. Upon one occasion the medium, whom 
I may say is my wife, was in a very weak condition. She 
had ascended a flight of stairs to her chamber, when I found 
her suddenly entranced of Dr. Morse, who directed me to 
give her a spoonful of brandy as quickly as possible, for she 
was on the point of passing out of her body. Her face was 
deathly pale and I hurriedly gave her the brandy. He 
directed me to place one of my hands upon her forehead, and 
the other upon the back of her head, while he would hold 
control until she had rallied. This was done, and in a short 



266 TRIP TO NEW ORLEANS 

time she rallied and her heart resumed its wonted action, he 
directing me to sense her pulse. 

" At the time of the Exposition in New Orleans, being 
in poor health, the medium and I went to that city and spent 
a few days. As we approached the city she informed me that 
she felt the presence of Dr. Morse very strongly, and pres- 
ently became quite interested in everything to be seen around 
us. She pointed out the locality in the city where Dr. 
Morse had lived, and said she could go directly to his house. 
Up to this time I had taken no steps to verify what I have 
here stated. Arriving at our hotel, I visited a drug-store, 
questioned the druggist as to whether such a person had ever 
lived in the city as this Dr. Morse, and I received the fullest 
verification of all he had told me, even to the location of the 
house where he resided, which was in the section of the city 
indicated by the medium. 

" It is a fact well known to Spiritualists that through the 
personality or aura of a medium the spirit can get en 7'apport 
with the medium, so that the spirit can see again upon the 
earth as if still in mortal form. Consequently the opportu- 
nity was afforded Dr. Morse, he being en rapport with the 
medium, to look again upon the city and its surroundings, 
with which he had been so familiar many years before. The 
medium had this consciousness of his almost constant pres- 
ence with her during our stay there. I regret to say that she 
became rather tired of it, and one day, while we were sitting 
outside the exposition grounds on a settee, she arose and 
remarked : ' I wish Dr. Morse would go away from me. I 
can not take a step but I feel him stepping beside me, and it 
begins to annoy me. ' I instantly arose, considerably vexed 
at her remark, saying : ' When you have been ill. Dr. Morse 
has been on hand to save your life. When I have been ill, 
I have had the benefit of his wisdom. I think you and I can 
both stand a good deal of Dr. Morse, and you should make 
no such remark as that.' Immediately the firm pressure as 
of a hand was upon my shoulder, and imagining somebody 
whom I had not seen was present, pushing me, I hurriedly 
turned, asking who pushed me, but saw nothing ; we were 
entirely alone in so far as I could see, but I knew what it 
meant, and I knew that the remark had deeply wounded our 
kind friend." 



CORRECT PREMONITION 267 



The Unspoken Warning — A Mother's Experience 

The incident of the fire described by Judge Dailey as 
given above suggests the following, published in the Proceed- 
ings of The Society for Psychical Research ^ after inquiry by 
Dr. Hodgson, American secretary of the society, Boston, 
and now published by Frederic Myers in " Human Person- 
ality." 

" One bitter cold day in winter a merry party of us, 
nestled down under furry robes, went to meet an appointment 
with a friend living a few miles distant, with whom we were 
to spend the afternoon and in the evening attend a concert 
to be held near by. The sleighing was delightful, the air 
keen and inspiriting, the host and hostess genial as the crack- 
ling fires in the grates, and the invited guests, of whom there 
were many besides ourselves, in that peculiar visiting trim 
which only old-time friends, long parted, can enjoy. Re- 
straint was thrown aside; we cracked jokes; we chattered 
like magpies, and not a little of the coming concert, which 
promised a rare treat to our unsophisticated ears. All went 
merry as a marriage-bell, and merrier than some, till just 
before tea, when I was seized with a sudden and unaccount- 
able desire to go home, accompanied by a dread or fear of 
something, I knew not what, which made the return appear, 
not a matter of choice, but a thing imperative. I tried to 
reason it away, to revive anticipations of the concert; I 
thought of the disappointment it would be to those who came 
with me to give it up, and, running over in my mind the 
condition in which things were left at home, could find no 
ground for alarm. 

" For many years a part of the house had been rented to 
a trusty family; our children were often rocked in the same 
cradle, and half of the time ate at the same table ; locks and 
bolts were things unused, and in deed as in word we were 
neighbors. In their care had been left a boy of ten years, 
the only one of the family remaining at home, who knew 
that when he returned from school he was expected to bring 
in wood and kindlings for the morning fire, take supper alone, 
or with little Clara E. , as he chose, and otherwise pass the 

1 Vol. XX., pp. 35-7. 



268 IMPRESSION OF DANGER 

time as he pleased, only that he must not go into the street 
to play or on to the pond to skate. He had been left many 
times in this way, and had never given occasion for the 
slightest uneasiness ; still, as this nameless fear grew upon 
me, it took the form of a conviction that danger of some sort 
threatened this beloved child. 

" I was rising to go and ask Mr. A. to take me home, 
when some one said : * You are very pale ; are you ill .-* ' 
' No, ' I answered, and, dropping back in the chair, told them 
how strangely I had been exercised for the last few minutes, 
adding, ' I really must go home. ' There was a perfect 
chorus of voices against it, and for a little time I was silenced, 
tho not convinced. Some one laid the matter before Mr. 
A., who replied: ' Nonsense; Eddie is a good boy to mind, 
will do nothing in our absence that he would not do if we 
were there, and is enjoying himself well at this moment, I'll 
warrant. ' This answer was brought to me in triumph, and 
I resolved to do as they said, * not to think about it.' But at 
tea my trembling hand almost refused to carry food to my 
lips, andl found it utterly impossible to swallov*? a mouthful. 
A death-like chill crept over me, and I knew that every eye 
was on me as I left the room. Mr. A. rose, saying, in a 
changed voice and without ceremony : ' Make haste ; bring 
the horse round, we must go right away. I never saw her in 
such a state before ; there is something in it. ' He followed 
me to the parlor, but before he could speak I was pleading 
as for dear life that not a moment be lost in starting for 
home. ' I know,' said I, ' it is not all imagination, and 
whether it is or not I shall certainly die if this dreadful in- 
cubus is not removed shortly.' 

" All was now confusion ; the tea-table deserted, the m.eal 
scarce tasted; and my friends, alarmed as much at my looks 
as at my words, were as anxious to hurry me off as they had 
been before to detain me. To me those terrible moments 
seemed hours, yet I am assured that not more than half an 
hour elapsed from the time my fears first found expression 
before we were on the road toward home. A horse some- 
what noted for fleetness was before us, and with only two in 
the cutter — the rest stayed to concert, and made Mr. A. 
promise that if nothing had happened we would return — 
went over the road at a rapid pace. I knew from the fre- 
quent repetition of a peculiar signal that the beast was being 



CAME AT NICK OF TIME 269 

urged to his best, yet I grew sick with impatience at the 
restraint. I wanted to fly. All this while my fears had 
taken no definite shape. I only knew that the child was in 
danger, and felt impelled to hurry to the rescue. Only once 
was the silence broken in that three-mile journey, and that 
was when the house was in full view. I said : * Thank God, 
the house is not on fire ! ' ' That was my own thought,' said 
Mr. A., but there was no slackening of speed. 

" On nearing home a cheerful light was glimmering from 
Mrs. E.'s window; before the vehicle had fairly stopped we 
were clear of it, and, opening the door, said in the same 
breath : ' Where's Eddie ? ' ' Eddie .-' why, he was here a 
little while ago,' answered Mrs. E. pleasantly, striving to 
dissipate the alarm she saw written on our countenances. 
' He ate supper with the children and played awhile at mar- 
bles ; then spoke of Libby Rose having a new picture-book 
and that he wanted to see it. You'll find him over there.' 
With swift steps Mr. A. crossed the street to the place men- 
tioned, but returned with ' He has not been there.' Eddie 
was remarkably fond of skating, and my next thought was 
that he had been tempted to disobedience. I said calmly : 
' We will go to the pond.' I was perfectly collected ; I could 
have worked all night without fatigue with the nerves in that 
state of tension; but Mr, A. said: ' No, you must go in and 
lie down. Eddie is safe enough, somewhere about the vil- 
lage. I'll go and find him. ' But there was nothing in the 
tone as in the words to reassure me. 

" As he spoke he crossed the hall to our own room and 
turned the knob. The door was locked. What could that 
mean } Eddie was either on the inside or had taken the key 
away with him. Mr. A. ran round to a window with a 
broken spring which could be opened from the outside. It 
went up with a clang, but a dense volume of smoke drove 
him back. After an instant another attempt was made, and 
this time, on a lounge directly under the window, he stum- 
bled on the insensible form of little Eddie, smothered in 
smoke. Limp and apparently lifeless, he was borne into the 
fresh cold air, and after some rough handling was restored to 
consciousness. 

" Eddie said, on returning from school, he made a good 
fire, and as the wood was snowy thought he would put it in 
the oven to dry ; something he had never done before. Then 



270 DR. HOLMES'S STORY 

on leaving Mrs, E. 's room he went in for an apple before 
going to see Libby Rose's picture-book, and it seemed so 
nice and warm he thought he would lie down a while. He 
could give no explanation as to what prompted him to turn 
the key ; it was the first and last time ; but this could have 
made no difference in the result, for no one would have dis- 
covered the smoke in time to save his life. The wood in the 
oven was burned to ashes, but as the doors were closed there 
was no danger of falling embers setting the house on fire ; 
and had we stayed to the concert everything would have been 
as when we left, except that little Eddie's voice would never 
more have made music for our ears. Every one said that 
with a delay of five or even three minutes we should have 
been too late. 

(Signed) " Mrs. C. A. C. Hadselle. 

"28 Bradford Street, Pittsfield, Mass., 
" May 28, 1888." 

Oliver Wendell Holmes Experiences a Singular 
Coincidence 

I quote the following from Frederic Myers : ^ 

The following case is quoted from " Over the Teacups," 
by Oliver Wendell Holmes (3d ed., 1891, p. 12). We are 
told in the introduction that the part of the book containing 
these cases was written in March, 1888. 

" I relate a singular coincidence which very lately occurred 
in my experience. ... I will first copy the memorandum 
made at the time : 

" ' Remarkable coincidence. On Monday, April 18, being 

at table from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30, with and [the 

two ladies of my household], I told them of the case of " trial 
by battel" offered by Abraham Thornton in 18 17. I men- 
tioned his throwing down his glove, which was not taken up 
by the brother of his victim, and so he had to be let off, for 
the old law was still in force. I mentioned that Abraham 
Thornton was said to have come to this country, " and I 
added he may be living near us for aught that I know." I 
rose from the table and found an English letter waiting 
for me, left while I sat at dinner. I copy the first portion 
of this letter : 

* " Humaa Personality," vol. i., pp. 660, 661. 



WATERPROOF AND INCOMBUSTIBLE 271 

" ' " 20 Alfred Place West (near Museum), 
South Kensington, London, S.W., 
April 7, 1887. 

"* "Dr. O. W. Holmes, — Dear Sir: In traveling the 
other day I met with a reprint of the very interesting case 
of Thornton for murder, 18 17. The prisoner pleaded suc- 
cessfully the old Wager of Battel. I thought you would like 
to read the account, and send it with this. . . . — Yours 
faithfully, Fred. Rathbone." ' 

" Mr. Rathbone is a well-known dealer in old Wedgwood 
and eighteenth-century art. As a friend of my hospitable 
entertainer, M. Willett, he had shown me many attentions 
in England, but I was not expecting any communication 
from him ; and when, fresh from my conversation, I found 
this letter just arrived by mail and left while I was at table, 
and on breaking the seal read what I had a few moments 
before been telling, I was greatly surprised, and immediately 
made a note of the occurrence, as given above. 

" I had long been familiar with all the details of this cele- 
brated case, but had not referred to it, so far as I can remem- 
ber, for months or years. I know of no train of thought 
which led me to speak of it on that particular day. I had 
never alluded to it before in that company, nor had I ever 
spoken of it with Mr. Rathbone. . . . 

" The case I have given is, I am confident, absolutely 
free from every source of error. I do not remember that 
Mr. Rathbone had communicated with me since he sent me 
a plentiful supply of mistletoe a year ago last Christmas. 
The account I received from him was cut out of The Sport- 
ing Times of March 5, 1887. My own knowledge of the 
case came from Kirby's ' Wonderful Museum,' a work pre- 
sented to me at least thirty years ago. I had not looked at 
the account, spoken of it, nor thought of it for a long time, 
when it came to me by a kind of spontaneous generation, as 
it seemed, having no connection with any previous train of 
thought that I was aware of. I consider the evidence of 
entire independence, apart from possible ' telepathic ' causa- 
tion, completely waterproof, air-tight, incombustible, and 
unassailable." 



272 STAGES OF CLAIRVOYANCE 



Facts with Comments by Alfrep Russel Wallace 

Let us bear in mind that Wallace stands in the front 
rank of living scientists, and that for many years he has care- 
fully studied psychic phenomena with the same thoroughness 
and system that first gave him fame in the Molucca Islands 
in the pre- Darwinian days. 

The following is from his pen : ^ 

"The subject of animal magnetism is still so much a dis- 
puted one among scientific men, and many of its alleged 
phenomena so closely border on, if they do not actually 
reach, what is classed as supernatural, that I wish to give a 
few illustrations of the kind of facts by which it is supported. 
I will first quote the evidence of Dr. William Gregory, late 
professor of chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, who 
for many years made continued personal investigations into 
this subject, and has recorded them in his ' Letters on Ani- 
mal Magnetism,' published in 185 1. The simpler phenom- 
ena of what are usually termed ' hypnotism ' and ' electrobiol- 
ogy ' are now universally admitted to be real, tho it must never 
be forgotten that they too had to fight their way through the 
same denials, accusations, and imputations that are now 
made against clairvoyance and phrenomesmerism. The 
same men who advocated, tested, and established the truth 
of the more simple facts claim that they have done the same 
for the higher phenomena; the same class of scientific and 
medical men who once denied the former now deny the 
latter. Let us see, then, if the evidence for the one is as 
good as it was for the other. 

" Dr. Gregory defines several stages of clairvoyance, some- 
times existing in the same, sometimes in different patients. 
The chief division, however, is into (i) sympathy or thought- 
reading, and (2) true clairvoyance. The evidence for the 
first is so overwhelming, it is to be met with almost every- 
where, and is so generally admitted that I shall not occupy 
space by giving examples, altho it is, I believe, still denied 
by the more materialistic physiologists. We will, therefore, 
confine our attention to the various phases of true clairvoy- 
ance. 

I "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," by Alfred Russel Wallace, pp. 61-64. 



STOLEN WATCH RESTORED 273 

" Dr. Haddock, residing at Bolton, had a very remarkable 
clairvoyante (E.) under his care. Dr. Gregory says : * After 
I returned to Edinburgh, I had very frequent communica- 
tion with Dr. H., and tried many experiments with this 
remarkable subject, sending specimens of writing, locks of 
hair, and other objects, the origin of which was perfectly 
unknown to Dr. H., and in every case without exception E. 
saw and described with accuracy the persons concerned ' (p. 

403)- 

" Sir Walter C. Trevelyan, Bart., received a letter from 
a lady in London, in which the loss of a gold watch was men- 
tioned. He sent the letter to Dr. H. to see if E. could trace 
the watch. She described the lady accurately, and her house 
and furniture minutely, and described the watch and chain, 
and described the person who had it, who, she said, was not 
a habitual thief, and said further that she could tell her 
handwriting. The lady, to whom these accounts were sent, 
acknowledged their perfect accuracy, but said the description 
of the thief applied to one of her maids whom she did not 
suspect, so she sent several pieces of handwriting, including 
that of both her maids. The clairvoyante immediately se- 
lected that of the one she had described, and said ' she was 
thinking of restoring the watch, saying she had found it.' 
Sir W. Trevelyan wrote with this information, but a letter 
from the lady crossed his, saying the girl mentioned before 
by the clairvoyante /lad restored the watch and said she had 
found it (p. 405). 

" Sir W. Trevelyan communicated to Dr. Gregory another 
experiment he had made. He requested the secretary of the 
Geographical Society to send him the writing of several per- 
sons abroad, not known to him, and without their names. 
Three were sent. E. discovered in each case where they 
were; in two of them described their persons accurately; 
described in all three cases the cities and countries in which 
they were, so that they could be easily recognized, and told 
the time by the clocks, which verified the place by difference 
of longitude (p. 407). 

" Many other cases, equally well tested, are given in great 
detail by Dr. Gregory, and numerous cases are given of tests 
of what may be called simple direct clairvoyance. For exam- 
ple, persons going to see the phenomena purchase in any 
shop they please a few dozens of printed mottoes enclosed in 
18 



274 WALLACE LOSING PATIENCE 

nutshells. These are placed in a bag, and the clairvoyante 
takes out a nutshell and reads the motto. The shell is then 
broken open and examined, and hundreds of mottoes have 
been thus read correctly. One motto thus read contained 
ninety-eight words. Numbers of other equally severe test 
cases are given by Dr. Gregory, devised and tried by himself 
and by other well-known persons. 

" Now will it be believed that in the very elaborate article 
in TJie British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, already 
referred to, on Dr. Gregory's and other works of an allied 
nature, 7zot one single experiment of this kind is mentioned or 
albtded to ? There is a great deal of general objection to 
Dr. Gregory's views, because he was a chemist and not spe- 
cially devoted to physiology (forgetting that Dr. Elliotson and 
Dr. Mayo, who testify to similar facts, were both specially 
devoted to physiology), and a few quotations of a general 
nature only are given; so that no reader could imagine that 
the work criticized was the result of observation or experimejit 
at all. The case is a complete illustration of judicial blind- 
ness. The opponents dare not impute wilful falsehood to 
Dr. Gregory, Dr. Mayo, Dr. Haddock, Sir Walter Trevelyan, 
Sir T. Willshire, and other gentlemen who vouch for these 
facts ; and yet the facts are of such an unmistakable nature 
that without imputing wilful falsehood they can not be 
explained away. They are therefore silently ignored, or 
more probably the records of them are never read. But the 
silence or contempt of our modern scientific men can not 
blind the world any longer to those grand and mysterious 
phenomena of mind, the investigation of which can alone 
conduct us to a knowledge of what we really are." 

Evidently Wallace is losing patience with his brother 
scientists — almost as much so as another who said : 

" The truth is that the average scientific man lives and 
has his being in a world full of closed doors, which he never 
dreams of trying to open. " 

But we must be patient ; it is far better that the average 
scientist is too conservative than it would be if he were too 
ready for change. 



PROFESSOR ZOLLNER WRONGED 275 

An Extraordinary Experiment by Professor Zollner, 
OF Leipsic University, Germany 

The Reading of the Date of a Coin in a Sealed Box — The 
Passage of Matter through Matter — Official Denial of An 
Injurious Report against Zollner 

Professor Zollner was, at the time of his famous experi- 
ments with Professor Slade, the medium, in 1877-78, one of 
the most authoritative scientists in continental Europe. 
There was not a whisper up to this time against his keenness 
as an observer of natural phenomena or against the soundness 
of his judgment. It is not creditable to scientists that, no 
sooner had this learned professor announced his conviction 
that his many experiments demonstrated the presence of 
supramundane intelligences, than abuse was poured upon him, 
by none more freely than by the scientists who before had 
done him honor, and who now abused him without first even 
attempting to test the truth or falsity of his experiments. 
His experiments by a large proportion of scientists were 
rejected in bulk and without inquiry. This is to the lasting 
discredit of his fellows. 

At first Zollner was made the butt of ridicule, as having 
been hoodwinked as some said, hypnotized as others said ; 
but finally his opponents seemed to have agreed upon the 
charge that " Zollner was suffering from incipient insanity, 
which would have developed to a manifest degree had he not 
died so early." 

I think I need give no further proof of the injustice of 
this charge than the facts that Zollner did not die until 1882, 
and that he retained the confidence of his university up to his 
sudden death by apoplexy. 

The following official letter has been written to me by 
the Rector Magnificus, Leipsic University : 



276 VINDICATION BY HIS UNIVERSITY 

" The Rector Magnificus of the University of 
Leipsic, November 7, 1903 

" Your letter addressed to the rector of the university, 
October 20, 1903, received. The rector of this university 
was installed here after the death of Zollner and had no per- 
sonal acquaintance with him; but information received from 
Zollner's colleagues states that during his entire studies at 
the university here, until his death, he was of sound mind; 
moreover, in the best of health. The cause of his death was 
a hemorrhage of the brain, on the morning of April 25, 1882, 
while he was at breakfast with his mother, and from which 
he died shortly after. It is true that Professor Zollner was 
an ardent believer in Spiritualism, and as such was in close 
relations with Slade, 

" Dr, Karl Bucher, 

" Professor of Statistics and National Economy at the 
University y 

I quote from Zollner's writings ' the following record of 
a remarkable experiment : 

"On May 5, 1878, at about twenty-five minutes past 
four, Mr, Slade, Herr Oscar von Hoffmann, and I took our 
places at the table, and in the sun-lighted room, of which a 
photographic copy is seen in the frontispiece. Besides a 
number of slates, purchased by myself, there lay upon the 
table other things, among them two small cardboard boxes, 
in which, at Slade's first residence at Leipsic, in December, 
1877, I had put some pieces of money, and then firmly plas- 
tered it up outside with strips of paper, I had already at 
that time been in hopes of the removal of the enclosed pieces 
of money without opening of the boxes. However, my 
friends and I were so astonished and occupied with the mul- 
titude of the other phenomena which happened at Slade's first 
and second visits to Leipsic (November and December, 
1877) that I abandoned the above-mentioned experiment for 
the time, and postponed it till Slade's return to Leipsic. One 
of these boxes was in form circular, and within it was a 

'"Transcendental Physics," translated by Charles Carleton Massey, pp. 
138-149. 



SPIRITS DIRECT TEST 2.77 

large piece of money ; this box was firmly fastened by a 
strip of paper, the breadth of which corresponded to the 
height of the box, and its length much exceeded the circuit 
of the box ; so indeed that first the strip of paper was spread 
with liquid glue on one side over its whole length and 
breadth, and was then stuck several times round the box, so 
that the latter, after the fastening, presented the appearance 
of a low cylinder of pasteboard. The other box was rectan- 
gular, of the same sort as those in which steel pens are kept. 
In this box I had put two small pieces of money, and had 
then closed it by sticking a strip of paper round it, perpen- 
dicularly to its length, by means of liquid glue. 

"As mentioned above, I had already, in December, 1877, 
fastened up these boxes, and as I had noted neither the value 
of the enclosed coins nor their date, I could afterward only 
ascertain by the noise from shaking the boxes : that enclosed 
in the circular one was a large German coin (a thaler or a 
five-mark piece), in the rectangular one were two smaller 
coins ; whether these were pennies, groschen, or five-groschen 
pieces I had, after the lapse of half a year, at the time of 
Slade's last stay in Leipsic, entirely forgotten. 

" After we had taken our places at the card-table on the 
above-mentioned day in the manner described, I took up the 
round box, and satisfied myself, by shaking, of the presence 
of the coin I had enclosed in it. Herr O. von Hoffmann did 
the same, and lastly Mr. Slade, who asked us for what pur- 
pose I had designed this box. I explained my purpose in a 
few words, and at the same time declared that it would be 
one of the finest confirmations of the reality of the fourth 
dimension, if his invisible intelligent beings succeeded in 
removing that coin from the box without opening it. Slade, 
ready as always to conform to my wish, took in the usual 
manner one of the slates which lay at hand, laid a morsel of 
slate-pencil upon it (indeed, as it happened, a considerably 
larger one than usual), and held the slate with his right 
hand half under the table. We heard writing, and when the 
slate was drawn out there was found upon it the request to 
lay a second piece of pencil on the slate, which was done. 
Then Slade, who sat at my left (von Hoffmann was on my 
right), held the slate with the two bits of pencil again under 
the table, while he as well as we waited intently what should 
come there. Meanwhile the two fastened-up boxes lay un- 



278 NOT THOUGHT READING 

touched on about the middle of the table. Some minutes 
passed without anything happening, when Slade gazed fixedly 
in a particular direction in the corner of the room, and at 
the same time said, quite astonished, but slowly, the words 
dragged after one another, and partly with repetition : ' I see 
— see funf and eighteen hundred seventy-six.' Neither Slade 
nor we knew what that could mean, and both Herr O. von 
Hoffmann and myself remarked almost simultaneously that 
at any rate * funf ' signified * funf ' (five), and made the sum 
of the addition 5 -f 1876 = 1881. While I threw out this 
remark half in jest, we heard a hard object fall on the slate, 
which Slade during all the time had held under the table 
with his right hand (the left lying before us on the table). 
The slate was immediately drawn out, and on it was found 
the five-mark piece, with the date 1876. Naturally I forth- 
with snatched up the pasteboard box standing before me, and 
which during all the foregoing had been touched by nobody, 
to ascertain, by shaking, the absence of the piece of money 
which had been in it half an hour before ; and, behold ! it 
was quite empty and silent ; the box was robbed of its con- 
tents in the shape of the five-mark piece, 

" As may be supposed, our pleasure at such an unhoped- 
for success of our experiment was extremely great ; all the 
more that by it at the same time was established the exist- 
ence of a direct perception of objects, not effected in the 
ordinary way of our sense-conceptions. 

" Moreover, it could not be any so-called thought-read- 
ing by the medium ; that is, the perception of representations 
already in the heads of human beings. For neither I, and 
much less Mr. Slade and Herr von Hoffmann, knew what 
sort of coin there was in the box nor what date it bore. 

" I was so satisfied with the success of this experiment 
under such stringent conditions that I was thinking of put- 
ting an end to the sitting and postponing further attempts 
to a later one. However, Slade remarked that he did not 
feel himself at all exhausted by the sitting, which had lasted 
at most ten minutes. This remark of Slade caused us to 
keep our places at the card-table and to engage in uncon- 
strained conversation with him. I introduced the subject of 
his sitting with the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, and 
requested him to give us a detailed account of the phenom- 
ena which took place at it, as hitherto we had seen only the 



PROOF OF CLAIRVOYANCE 279 

brief paragraph statement about them in the press. Thus 
urged, Slade mentioned that a very remarkable experiment 
in slate-writing had succeeded in the presence of the Grand 
Duke Constantine. Accidentally there had been two bits of 
pencil on the slate; when he held it under the table the 
writing of two pencils was heard at the same time, and when 
he drew out the slate the one pencil had written from left to 
right, the other, at the same time, from right to left. I at 
once proposed to try whether this experiment would succeed 
also with us ; the suggestion arose from me quite naturally, 
from the association of ideas elicited by the two bits of pen- 
cil which had been required in the above-mentioned experi- 
ment, without our having as yet known the object of this 
written demand. 

" Slade, at once ready to comply with my wish, held the 
slate with the two bits of pencil under the table-surface, and 
we soon heard, very clearly, writing upon it. 

" When the slate was withdrawn there was a communica- 
tion in English as follows : 

"* 10— Pfennig— 1876 
2 — Pfennig — 1875. 

Let this be proof to you of clairvoyance. After the nine 
days you must rest, or it will harm you and the medium. 
Believe in me, your friend. ' 

" We at once referred the first part of this message to the 
two coins contained in the rectangular box still unopened. 
I was just about to open it, we having immediately before 
convinced ourselves by shaking the box and the distinct jin- 
gling within it of the presence of the two smaller coins, yet 
without knowing the value or date of them. Suddenly, how- 
ever, I changed my intention, and set the little box again 
uninjured on the middle of the table, while Herr von Hoff- 
mann as also Slade suggested the possibility that perhaps in 
like manner, as the five-mark piece fell shortly before, the 
two coins might fall from the unopened box upon the slate 
underneath. Immediately upon this suggestion Slade again 
held an empty slate under the middle of the table. Scarcely 
was this done when we distinctly heard two coins drop down 
on the surface of the slate, and on closer examination we, 
in fact, found confirmed the above statements on the slate. 



28o ZOLLNER DOUBLY SURPRISED 

Highly delighted, I now seized the still closed box, in the 
confident expectation that it would, like the round box, be 
empty, and that therefore on shaking no rattling within would 
be heard. How great was my surprise when nevertheless 
the rattling happened, proceeding, indeed, likewise from two 
bodies, which yet, judging from the altered character of the 
sound, could not be coins. Already I was intending to con- 
vince myself of the contents of the box by opening it, which 
could not be done without tearing the strips of paper pasted 
over it, when Slade prepared to get our question answered, 
as usual in such cases, through slate- writing, by his spirits. 
Scarcely had he taken a slate with a fragment of pencil 
lying upon it, and held it half under the table, when we dis- 
tinctly heard writing. Upon the upper surface of the slate 
was written in English : 

" * The two slate-pencils are in the box. ' 

" In fact, the two large pieces of slate-pencil were nowhere 
to be found, and when I now opened the box by tearing the 
strip of paper glued to it, there within it, to our delight, v/ere 
both the pieces of pencil. 

" The foregoing facts are of great value in a threefold 
aspect. First, there is proved the occurrence of writing 
under the influence of Slade, the purport of which was neces- 
sarily unknown to him before. It is consequently impossible 
that these writings occur under the influence of the conscious 
will of Slade, whatever modus operandi is presupposed. 

" Secondly, the apparent so-called passage through matter 
is proved in a highly elegant and compendious manner. In 
order to reach by the shortest way the surface of the slate, 
the coins must apparently have penetrated not only the walls 
of the box, but also about 20 millimeters thickness of the oak 
table. The two slate-pencils must have traveled the same 
way in a reverse direction from the surface of the slate. 

" Thirdly, by these experiments an incontrovertible proof 
is afforded of the reality of so-called clairvoyance, and that in 
a double way. The first time, with the five-mark piece, the 
contents of the closed box appeared in the form of a definite 
represented image in Blade's intuitional life; he ' saw' the 
numbers $ and 1876. The second time this was not the 
case, but the contents were communicated to us in the form 
of written characters on the slate. The contents of this 
rectangular box must therefore have existed as imaged in 



PODMORE REASONS LOOSELY 281 

another, not a three-dimensionally incorporated intelligence, 
before that represented image could be transmitted to us by 
the aid of writing. Hereby is proved, as it seems to me, 
in a very cogent manner the existence of intelligent beings, 
invisible to us, and of their active participation in our ex- 
periments." 

Frank Podmore, in his book against Spiritualism, says,^ 
in explanation of this coin experiment of Zollner : 

" As a commentary on this performance, it is only neces- 
sary to state that the experiment had been tried and failed 
some six months previously, that the boxes had not been 
opened in the interval, and that Zollner had kept no record 
of the values and dates of the coins enclosed. Again oppor- 
tunity for preparation on the part of the medium and for sub- 
stitution was afforded." 

The reader will observe : 

1. Podmore does not say in what way this test was 
vitiated by the fact that Zollner had not recorded the value 
and dates of the coins. 

2. Zollner does not say that he had tried this experiment 
and had failed, but that he intended to try it but did not. 
Mr. von Hoffmann writes me that the experiment had not 
been made prior to the above successful effort. 

3. Zollner assured himself that the coins were in the 
boxes just before the experiment by shaking the boxes, and 
he found out that the coins were not in the boxes by shaking 
and then by opening. 

4. Zollner detected the difference between the sound when 
he shook the box after the pencils were in it. A child would 
easily distinguish the difference between the sound made by 
two silver pieces and the sound made by two bits of pencil. 

5. One box when first shaken by Zollner had a large coin 
in it, and when again shaken it had nothing in it. 

I fear autosuggestion at times vitiates Mr. Podmore's rea- 
soning. 

'Frank Podmore, "Modern Spiritualism," vol. ii., p. 192. 



282 UNIVERSAL SKEPTICISM 



Scientific Experiments by the Society for Psychical 
Research in Thought-Transference 

A few years ago I knew of no psychologist of repute any- 
where in the world who believed in the possibility of convey- 
ing a thought from one mind to another except through one 
or the other of the five senses. 

In the first report on thought-reading made by its com- 
mittee in 1882 to the Society for Psychical Research are 
these words : 

" Is there or is there not any existing or attainable evi- 
dence that can stand fair physiological criticism to support a 
belief that a vivid impression or a distinct idea in one mind 
can be communicated to another mind without the interven- 
ing help of the recognized organs of sensation? And if such 
evidence be found, is the impression derived from a rare or 
partially developed and hitherto unrecognized sensory organ, 
or has the mental precept been evoked directly without any 
antecedent sense-precept ? . . . 

" The present state of scientific opinion throughout the 
world is not only hostile to any belief in the possibility of 
transmitting a single mental concept, except through the 
ordinary channels of sensation, but, generally speaking, it is 
hostile even to any inquiry upon the matter. Every leading 
physiologist and psychologist down to the present time has 
relegated what, for want of a better term, has been called 
' thought-reading ' to the limbo of exploded fallacies.^ Dr. 
W. B. Carpenter, whose name and distinguished contribu- 
tions to the science and literature of physiology command 
universal recognition and respect, finds in the so-called 
thought-reading a striking confirmation of views he has long 
advocated, that the ' communications are made by uncon- 
scious muscular action on the part of one person and automati- 

1 In the July number of the Nineteenth Century the senior assistant phy- 
sician at Westminster Hospital expressed his amazement at the hardihood of any 
one having the slightest pretense to scientific knowledge daring to put fortn evi- 
dence in favor of thought-reading ; and a recent writer in the Saturday Review 
gives expression to the general scientific point of view of the present day on this 
svibject when he remarks that "we thought we had heard the last of thought- 
reading." 



REVOLUTION IN TWENTY YEARS 283 

cally interpreted by the other.' Where collusion does not 
come into play all that Dr. Carpenter has ever seen or heard 
rests upon the ' intermediation of those expressional signs 
which are made and interpreted alike unconsciously. ' Dr. 
H. Maudsley, in his ' Pathology of Mind,' takes the same 
view as Dr. Carpenter, treating the subject as hardly worthy 
of serious refutation. Collusion, hallucination, unconscious 
interpretation of unconsciously imparted signs, furnish, ac- 
cording to the physiologists of to-day, abundant explanation 
of the phenomena under investigation. " 

A marked revolution in twenty years has been wrought 
in public and in scientific . opinion on this subject, chiefly 
through the persistent and wise scientific experiments of this 
society. Its experiments fall little, if any, short of absolute 
demonstration. Sir Oliver Lodge, the president in 1903 of 
the S. P. R., recently said (see The Pall Mall Magazine for 
January, 1904) : " What we [the S. P. R.] can challenge the 
judgment of the world upon is telepathy. Here is the begin- 
ning of a wider conception of science. Directly men see 
and admit, as they must do from the overwhelming evidence, 
that it is possible to transmit ideas direct from brain to 
brain without the intermediaries of speech and hearing, they 
are looking into and gaining admission to new fields of 
exploration." 

A few of the earlier experiments in telepathy published 
by the S. P. R. are here given — since the publication of 
these reports very great progress toward certainty has been 
made along the lines of these investigations. 

Experiments Made and Reported by Sir Oliver 
Lodge, D.Sc. ^ 

" Members of the Society for Psychical Research are all 
perfectly aware of the experiments in thought-transference 
which have been originated and carried out by Mr. Malcolm 
Guthrie, in Liverpool. 

' Report by Professor Lodge to S. P. R., in 1884, Proceedings, vol. i., Part vi., 
pp. 190-8. 



284 SIR OLIVER LODGE'S REPORT 

" Perhaps it may not be considered impertinent, since it 
bears on the question of responsibihty and genuineness, if I 
state that Mr. Guthrie holds an important position in Liver- 
pool, being a justice of the peace and an active member of 
the governing bodies of several public institutions, among 
others of the new University College; that he is a severe 
student of philosophy, and the author of several works bear- 
ing on the particular doctrines of Mr. Herbert Spencer. I 
may also say that he is a relative of Prof, Frederick Guthrie, 
and that he has exhibited in this experimental research such 
care and systematic vigilance as might perhaps have been 
expected on Mr. Francis Galton's principles, and such as 
would, if properly directed, have placed him in a high rank 
of experimental philosophers. I may also remind you of 
what he himself has here said, viz., that he is a partner in 
the chief drapery establishment in Liverpool, and that it is 
among the employees of that large business that the two 
percipients hereafter referred to were accidentally discovered. 

" Let it be understood that the experiments are Mr. Guth- 
rie's, and that my connection with them is simply this : that 
after Mr. Guthrie had laboriously carried out a long series of 
experiments and had published many of his results, he set 
about endeavoring to convince such students of science as he 
could lay his hands upon in Liverpool; and w^ith this object 
he appealed to me, among others, to come and witness, and 
within limits modify, the experiments in such a way as would 
satisfy me of their genuineness and perfect good faith. 

" Yielding to his entreaty I consented, and have been, I 
suppose, at some dozen sittings ; at first simply looking on 
so as to grasp the phenomena, but afterward taking charge of 
the experiments — Mr, Guthrie himself often not being pres- 
ent, tho he was always within call in another room, ready to 
give advice and assistance when desired. 

" In using the term ' thought-transference,' I would ask 
to be understood as doing so for convenience, because the 
observed facts can conveniently be grouped under such a 
title; but I would not be understood as implying that I hold 
any theory on the subject. It is a most dangerous thing to 
attempt to convey a theory by a phrase, and, probably, if I 
held any theory on the subject, I should be more guarded in 
m}/- language, and should require many words to set it forth. 
As it is, the phrase describes correctly enough what appears 



LODGE'S HYPOTHESIS 285 

to take place, viz,, that one person may, under favorable con- 
ditions, receive a faint impression of a thing which is strongly 
present in the mind, or thought, or sight, or sensorium of 
another person not in contact, and may be able to describe 
or draw it more or less correctly. But how the transfer takes 
place, or whether there is any transfer at all, or what is the 
physical reality underlying the terms 'mind,' 'conscious- 
ness,' ' impression, ' and the like ; and whether this thing we 
call mind is located in the person or in the space round 
him, or in both, or neither; whether indeed the term loca- 
tion, as applied to mind, is utter nonsense and simply mean- 
ingless — concerning all these things I am absolutely blank 
and have no hypothesis whatsoever. [This report was made in 
1884; since then Professor Lodge has become much more 
positive in his thinking on this subject.] I may, however, 
be permitted to suggest a rough and crude analogy. That 
the brain is the organ of consciousness is patent, but that 
consciousness is located in the brain is what no psychologist 
ought to assert ; for just as the energy of an electric charge, 
tho apparently on the conductor, is not on the conductor, but 
in all the space round it; just as the energy of an electric 
current, tho apparently in the copper wire, is certainly not 
all in the copper wire, and possibly not any of it ; so it may 
be that the sensory consciousness of a person, tho apparently 
located in his brain, may be conceived of as also existing 
like a faint echo in space or in other brains, tho these are 
ordinarily too busy and preoccupied to notice it. 

" The experiments which I have witnessed proceed in 
this sort of way. One person is told to keep in a perfectly 
passive condition, with a mind as vacant as possible; and to 
assist this condition the organs of sense are unexcited, the 
eyes being bandaged and silence maintained. It might be 
as well to shut out even the ordinary street hum by plugging 
the ears, but as a matter of fact this was not done. 

" A person thus kept passive is ' the percipient.' In the 
experiments I witnessed the percipient was a young lady, one 
or other of two who had been accidentally found to possess 
the necessary power. Whether it is a common power or not 
I do not know. So far as I am aware very few persons have 
been tried. I myself tried, but failed abjectly. It was easy 
enough to picture things to oneself, but they did not appear 
to be impressed on me from without, nor did any of them 



286 MODUS OPERANDI 

bear the least resemblance to the object in the agent's mind. 
[For instance, I said a pair of scissors instead of the five of 
diamonds, and things like that.] Nevertheless, the person 
acting as percipient is in a perfectly ordinary condition, and 
can in no sense be said to be in a hypnotic state, unless this 
term be extended to include the emptiness of mind produced 
by blindfolding and silence. To all appearance a person in 
a brown study is far more hypnotized than the percipients I 
saw, who usually unbandaged their own eyes and chatted be- 
tween successive experiments. 

" Another person sitting near the percipient, sometimes 
at first holding her hands but usually and ordinarily without 
any contact at all but with a distinct intervening distance, 
was told to think hard of a particular object, either a name, 
or a scene, or a thing, or of an object or drawing set up in a 
good light and in a convenient position for staring at. This 
person is ' the agent,' and has, on the whole, the hardest time 
of it. It is a most tiring and tiresome thing to stare at a 
letter, or a triangle, or a donkey, or a teaspoon, and to think 
of nothing else for the space of two or three minutes. 
Whether the term ' thinking ' can properly be applied to such 
barbarous concentration of mind as this I am not sure; but 
I can answer for it that if difficulty is an important element 
in the definition of ' thinking,' then it is difficult enough in 
all conscience. 

" Very frequently more than one agent is employed, and 
when two or three people are in the room they are all told 
to think of the object more or less strenuously ; the idea being 
that wandering thoughts in the neighborhood certainly can 
not help, and may possibly hinder, the clear transfer of im- 
pression. As regards the question whether when several 
agents are thinking, only one is doing the work, or whether 
all really produce some effect, I have made a special experi- 
ment, which leads me to conclude that more than one agent 
can be active at the same time. We conjecture that several 
agents are probably more powerful than one, but that a con- 
fusedness of impression may sometimes be produced by 
different agents attending to different parts or aspects of the 
object; this, however, is mere conjecture. 

" Most people seem able to act as agents, tho some appear 
to do better than others. I can hardly say whether I am 
much good at it or not. I have not often tried alone, and in 



TRICKERY EXCLUDED 287 

the majority of cases when I have tried I have failed; on the 
other hand, I have once or twice apparently succeeded. We 
have many times succeeded with agents quite disconnected 
from the percipient in ordinary life and sometimes complete 
strangers to them. Mr. Birchall, the headmaster of the 
Birkdale Industrial School, frequently acted; and the house 
physician at the Eye and Ear Hospital, Dr. Shears, had a 
successful experiment, acting alone, on his first and only 
visit. All suspicion of a prearranged code is thus rendered 
impossible even to outsiders who are unable to witness the 
obvious fairness of all the experiments. 

" The object looked at by the agent is placed usually on 
a small black opaque wooden screen between the percipient 
and agents, but sometimes it is put on a larger screen behind 
the percipient. The objects were kept in an adjoining room 
and were selected and brought in by me, with all due precau- 
tion, after the percipient was blindfolded. I should say, 
however, that no reliance was placed on, or care taken in, 
the bandaging. It was merely done because the percipient 
preferred it to merely shutting the eyes. After recent 
experiments on blindfolding by members of the society, I 
certainly would not rely on any form of bandaging; the 
opacity of the wooden screen on which the object was placed 
was the thing really depended on, and it was noticed that no 
mirrors or indistinct reflectors were present. The only sur- 
face at all suspicious was the polished top of the small table 
on which the opaque screen usually stood. But as the screen 
sloped backward at a slight angle, it was impossible for the 
object on it to be thus mirrored. Moreover, sometimes I 
covered the table with paper, and very often it was not 
used at all, but the object was placed on a screen or a settee 
behind the percipient ; and one very striking success was 
obtained with the object placed on a large drawing-board, 
loosely swathed in a black silk college-gown, and with the 
percipient immediately behind the said drawing-board and 
almost hidden by it. 

" As regards collusion and trickery, no one who has wit- 
nessed the absolutely genuine and artless manner in which 
the impressions are described but has been perfectly con- 
vinced of the transparent honesty of purpose of all concerned. 
This, however, is not evidence to persons who have not 
been present, and to them I can only say that to the best of 



288 WHAT IS TRANSMITTED? 

my scientific belief no collusion or trickery was possible 
under the varied circumstances of the experiments. 

" A very interesting question presents itself as to wliat 
is really transmitted, whether it is the idea or name of the 
object or whether it is the visual impression. To examine 
this I frequently drew things without any name — perfectly 
irregular drawings. I am bound to say that these irregular 
and unnamable productions have always been rather difficult, 
tho they have at times been imitated fairly well ; but it is 
not at all strange that a faint impression of an unknown 
object should be harder to grasp and reproduce than a faint 
impression of a familiar one, such as a letter, a common 
name, a teapot, or a pair of scissors. Moreover, in some 
very interesting cases the idea or name of the object was 
certainly the thing transferred, and not the visual impression 
at all ; this specially happened with one of the two percip- 
ients ; and, therefore, probably in every case the fact of the 
object having a name would assist any faint impression of 
its appearance which might be received. 

" As to aspect, i.e., inversion or perversion, so far as my 
experience goes it seems perfectly accidental whether the 
object will be drawn by the percipient in its actual position 
or in the inverted or perverted position. This is very 
curious if true, and would certainly not have been expected 
by me. Horizontal objects are never described as vertical, 
nor vice versa ; and slanting objects are usually drawn with 
the right amount of slant. 

" In proceeding to the details of the actual experiments, 
it would take far too long to recount the whole — failures as 
well as successes ; I shall only describe a few from which a 
more or less obvious moral may be drawn. 

" The two percipients are Miss R. and Miss E. Miss 
R. is the more prosaic, staid, and self-contained personage, 
and she it is who gets the best quasi-visual impression, but 
she is a bad drawer, and does not reproduce it very well. 

" Miss E. is, I should judge, of a more sensitive tempera- 
ment, seldom being able to preserve a strict silence for in- 
stance, and she it is who more frequently jumps to the idea 
or name of the object without being able so frequently to 
' see ' it. 

" I was anxious to try both percipients at once so as to 
compare their impressions, but I have not met with much 



TRIAL WITH A DOUBLE AGENT 289 

success under these conditions, and usually therefore have 
had to try one at a time — the other being frequently absent 
or in another room, tho also frequently present and acting 
as part or sole agent. 

" I once tried a double agent — that is, not two agents 
thinking of the same thing, but two agents each thinking of 
a different thing. A mixed and curiously double impression 
was thus produced and described by the percipient, and both 
the objects were correctly drawn. 



" Description of Some of the Experiments. 

" In order to describe the experiments briefly I will put 
in parentheses everything said by me or by the agent, and in 
inverted commas all the remarks of the percipient. The first 
seven experiments are all that were made on one evening 
with the particular percipient, and they were rapidly per- 
formed. 

" A. Experiments with Miss R. as Percipient. 

^^ First Agent, Mr. Birchall, holding hands. No one else 
present except myself. 

" Object — a blue sqjiare of silk. — (Now, it's going to be a 
color; ready.) ' Is it green.? ' (No.) * It's something be- 
tween green and blue. . . . Peacock.' (What shape .'') She 
drew a rhombus. 

" [N.B. — It is not intended to imply that this was a suc- 
cess by any means, and it is to be understood that it was 
only to make a start on the first experiment that so much 
help was given as is involved in saying ' it's a color.' When 
they are simply told ' it's an object,' or, what is much the 
same, when nothing is said at all, the field for guessing is 
practically infinite. When no remark at starting is recorded 
none was made, except such an one as ' Now we are ready,' 
by myself.] 

"Next object — a key on a black ground. — (It's an object.) 
In a few seconds she said, * It's bright. ... It looks like a 
key,' Told to draw it she drew it just inverted. 

" Next object — three gold studs i?t morocco case. * Is it 
yellow } . . . Something gold. . . . Something round. . . . 
19 



290 SURPRISING RESULTS 

A locket or a watch perhaps. ' (Do you see more than one 
round ? ) ' Yes, there seem to be more than one. . . Are 
there three rounds?. . . . Three rings.' (What do they 
seem to be set in?) ' Something bright Uke beads.' [Evi- 
dently not understanding or attending to the question.] 
Told to unblindfold herself and draw, she drew the three 
rounds in a row quite correctly, and then sketched round 
them absently the outline of the case ; which seemed, there- 
fore, to have been apparent to her tho she had not consciously 
attended to it. It was an interesting and striking experi- 
ment. 

" Next object — a pair of scissors standing partly open with 
their points down. — ' Is it a bright object? . . . Something 
long ways [indicating verticality] , ... A pair of scissors 
standing up. ... A little bit open.' Time, about a minute 
altogether. She then drew her impression, and it was cor- 
rect in every particular. The object in this experiment 
was on a settee behind her, but its position had to be pointed 
out to her when, after the experiment, she wanted to see it. 

" Next object — a drawing of a right-angle triangle on its 
side. — (It's a drawing.) She drew an isosceles triangle on 
its side. 

"Next — a circle with a cord across it. — She drew two 
detached ovals, one with a cutting line across it. 

"Next — a drawing of a Union Jack pattern. — As usual in 
drawing experiments. Miss R. remained silent for perhaps 

ORIGINAL. REPRODUCTION 

a minute ; then she said, ' Now I am ready. ' I hid the ob- 
ject ; she took off the handkerchief, and proceeded to draw on 
paper placed ready in front of her. She this time drew all 
the lines of the figure except the horizontal middle one. She 
was obviously much tempted to draw this, and, indeed, began 
it two or three times faintly, but ultimately said, ' No, I'm 
not sure,' and stopped. 

" [N.B. — The actual drawings made in all the experi- 
ments are preserved intact by Mr. Guthrie.] 

" [end of sitting.] 



SLIGHT DEVIATIONS STRONG PROOF 291 

"Experiments with Miss R. — contimied. 

" I will now describe an experiment indicating that one 
agent may be better than another. 

''''Object — a playing-card, the Three of Hearts. — Miss E. 
and Mr. Birchall both present as agents, but Mr. Birchall 
holding percipient's hands at first. * Is it a black cross . . . 
a white ground with a black cross on it .'' ' Mr. Birchall now 
let Miss E. hold hands instead of himself, and Miss R. very 
soon said, ' Is it a card } ' (Right.) ' Are there three spots 
on it.-* . . . Don't know what they are. ... I don't think I 
can get the color. . . . They are one above the other, but 
they seem three round spots. ... I think they're red, but 
am not clear.' 

" Next object — a playing-card zvith a blue anchor painted 
on it slantwise instead of pips. — No contact at all this time, 

but another lady, Miss R d, who had entered the room, 

assisted Mr. B, and Miss E. as agents. * Is it an anchor.-* 
. . . a little on the slant.' (Do you see any color .'') 'Color 
is black. . . . It's a nicely drawn anchor.' When asked to 
draw she sketched part of it, but had evidently half forgotten 
it, and not knowing the use of the cross arm, she could only 
indicate that there was something more there but she couldn't 
remember what. Her drawing had the right slant exactly. 

'^ Another object — two pair of coarse lines crossing ; draw7i 
in red chalk, and set up at some distance from agents. No 
contact. * I only see lines crossing.' She saw no color. 
She afterward drew them quite correctly, but very small. 

''^Double object. — It was now that I arranged the double 
object between Miss R d and Miss E., who happened to 



D X S 



ORIGINALS. KEPRODUCTION. 

be sitting nearly facing one another. [See Nature, June 12, 
1884.] The drawing was a square on one side of the paper, 

a cross on the other. Miss R d looked at the side with 

the square on it. Miss E. looked at the side with the cross. 
Neither knew what the other was looking at — nor did the 
percipient know that an3'^thing unusual was being tried. Mr. 
Birchall was silently asked to take off his attention, and he 
got up and looked out of window before the drawings were 



292 FAR BEYOND COINCIDENCE 

brought in, and during the experiment. There was no con- 
tact. Very soon Miss. R said, ' I see things moving about. 
... I seem to see two things. ... I see first one up there 
and then one down there. ... I don't know which to draw. 
. . . I can't see either distinctly.' (Well anyhow, draw 
what you have seen.) She took off the bandage and drew 
first a square, and then said, * Then there was the other 
thing as well . . . afterward they seemed to go into one,' 
and she drew a cross inside the square from corner to corner, 
adding afterward, ' I don't know what made me put it inside.' 

" The next is a case of a perfect stranger acting as agent 
by himself at the first trial. Dr. Shears, house physician at 
the Eye and Ear Infirmary, came down to see the phenomena, 
and Miss R. having arrived before the others, Mr. Guthrie 
proposed his trying as agent alone. Dr. Shears, therefore, 
held Miss R. 's hand while I set up in front of him a card ; 
nothing whatever being said as to the nature of the object. 

" Object — the five of clubs , at first on a white ground. ' Is 
it something bright } ' (No answer, but I changed the object 
to a black ground where it was more conspicuous.) * A lot 
of black with a white square on it.' (Go on.) 'Is it a 
card?' (Yes.) 'Are there five spots on it.-*' (Yes.) 
' Black ones.' (Right.) * I can't see the suit, but I think 
it's spades.' 

" Another object at same sitting, but with several agents , 
no contact, a drawing of this form — 



REPRODUCTION. 



" * I can see something, but I am sure I can't draw it. . . . 
It's something with points all around it. . . . It's a star, 
... or like a triangle within a triangle. ' Asked to draw it, 
she expressed reluctance, said it was too difificult, and drew 
part of a star figure, evidently a crude reproduction of the 
original, but incomplete. She then began afresh by draw- 
ing a triangle, but was unable to proceed. 

" I then showed her the object for a few seconds. She 
exclaimed, ' Oh, yes, that's what I saw. ... I understand it 



"SAW THE SAME FLAG" 293 

now. * I said, ' Well now draw it.' She made a more com- 
plete attempt, but it was no more really like the original 
than the first had been, 

" Experiments at a Sitting in the room of Dr. Herdman, 
Professor of Zoology at University College. 

" Object — a drawing of the outlifte of a flag. — Miss R. as 
percipient in contact with Miss E. as agent. Very quickly 
Miss R. said, ' It's a little flag ' ; and when asked to draw. 



I 

ORIGINAL, REPRODUCTION, 

she drew it fairly well but perverted, I showed her the flag 
(as usual after a success), and then took it away to the draw- 
ing-place to fetch something else. I made another drawing, 
but instead of bringing it I brought the flag back again and 
set it up in the same place as before, but inverted. There 

was no contact this time. Miss R d and Miss E. were 

acting as agents. 

" Object — same flag inverted. — After some time. Miss R. 
said : ' No, I can't see anything this time. I still see that 
flag, . , , The flag keeps bothering me, . , . I sha'n't do 
it this time, ' Presently I said : * Well, draw what you saw 
anyway, ' She said : ' I only saw the same flag, but perhaps 
it had a cross on it,' So she drew a flag in the same posi- 
tion as before, but added a cross to it. Questioned as to 
aspect she said, * Yes, it was just the same as before.' 



" Object — an oval gold locket hanging by a hit of string 
with a little price label attached. — Placed like the former ob- 
ject on a large drawing-board, swathed in a college gown. 
The percipient, Miss R, , close behind the said board and 

almost hidden by it. Agents, Miss R d and Miss E, 

sitting in front; no contact; nothing said. T see something 



294 IT IS NOT CLEVER GUESSING 

gold, . . . something hanging, . . . like a gold locket. ' 
(What shape?) * It's oval,' indicating with her fingers cor- 
rectly. (Very good so far, tell us something more) — mean- 
ing ticket at top. No more said. When shown the object 
she said, * Oh, yes, it was just like that,' but she had seen 
nothing of the little paper ticket. 

" Next object — a watch and chain phined up to the board 
as on a waistcoat. — This experiment was a failure, and is 
only interesting because the watch-ticking sounded abnor- 
mally loud, sufficient to give any amount of hint to a person 
on the lookout for such sense indications. But it is very evi- 
dent to those witnessing the experiments that the percipient 
is in a quite different attitude of mind to that of a clever 
guesser, and ordinary sense indications seem wholly neglected. 
I scarcely expected, however, that the watch-ticking could 
pass unnoticed, tho indeed we shuffled our feet to drown it 
somewhat, but so it was ; and all we got was, * Something 
bright, . . . either steel or silver. . . . Is it anything like 
a pair of scissors .'' ' (Not a bit.) " 

Experiments in Transference of Physical Sensations ' 

" The following experiments in transference of pains and 
tastes were also made by Frederic Myers and myself, on 
April 26, the agent being Mr. G. A. Smith, and the ' subject ' 
a very intelligent young cabinet-maker, named Conway, who 
had been thrown into a light hypnotic trance. For the first 
set Mr. Smith was in light contact with Conway, behind 
whom he stood. No hint was given to Conway as to whether 
his answers were right or wrong ; he was simply asked by 
Dr. Myers or myself what he felt. Mr. Smith kept perfect 
silence throughout. 

" I. Mr. Smith was pinched, by one of the experimenters, 
on the right upper arm. Conway localized very nearly the 
corresponding place on the left arm, and then the right spot 
on the right arm. 

"2. Mr. Smith's right foot was pressed. Conway began 
to move his right leg uneasily, and complained of pain from 
the foot upward. 

" 3. Mr. Smith's right little finger was pinched. Con- 
way complained of pain in the right shoulder. 

> Reported by Edmund Gurney to S, P. R., Proceedings, vol. ii., Part vi., 

pp. 205-6, 



SENSE OF TASTE TRANSFERRED 095 

"4. The lower lobe of Mr. Smith's left ear was pinched. 
Conway complained that the hair above his right ear was 
being pulled. 

" 5. Mr. Smith's right upper eyelid was pinched. Con- 
way complained of pain in the forehead. 

" 6. Mr. Smith's left popliteal space was pinched. Con- 
way complained of pain in the lower third of the left thigh. 

" 7. Mr. Smith was pinched in the right lumbar region. 
Conway complained of pain in the left hypochondrium and 
lumbar region. 

" In the next set of trials there was no contact whatever 
between Mr. Smith and Conway. Nor was Conway (who 
was still in the hypnotic state) informed before the experi- 
ments began of what nature they were to be. Standing at 
some distance behind him, I suddenly and silently gave Mr. 
Smith some salt, motioning to him to put it into his mouth. 
He did so; and Conway instantly and loudly exclaimed, 
'What's this salt stuff.?' 

I now gave Mr. Smith 
in snccession— Conway said— 

Sugar " Sweeter; not so bad as before." 

Citric Acid " Bitter ; something worse — a little reminds me of 

cayenne — sweety." 

A Raspberry Drop. ..." A sweetish taste — like sugar." 

Salt "I told you I liked sweet things, not j<z//— such 

a mixture." 

Cloves "Don't like it; hot — little bit of honey mixed 

with it." 

Salt " Something acid, salty — first one thing, then an- 
other — like brine." 

Powdered Ginger. " Hot; dries your mouth up." Don't like it — re- 
minds me of mustard." 

Sugar "A little better — a sweetish taste." 

Powdered Alum "You call that sweet, do you? Brackish and 

bitter this — enough to skin your mouth out, 
bitter." 

Cayenne Pepper "It's hot, and there is some sugar in it, just to 

soften it over a bit. It is \i<:)\.—you would 
feel hot, I can tell you." 

Cloves. " Not so very much better, but it's sweeter ; it's 

sugar, only something else with it." 

Vinegar Conway had sunk into a deeper hypnotic sleep, 

and made no remark. 



296 FAILURES AND SUCCESSES REPORTED 

Experiments in Thought-Transference, by Malcolm 
Guthrie and James Birchall, Honorary Secretary 
OF the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical So- 
ciety 

"Throughout the series Mr. Smith preserved perfect 
silence, and the only remarks made by Dr. Myers and myself 
were brief inquiries as to what Conway tasted, with an occa- 
sional word calculated to mislead him. 

" These are not picked results ; only one other series of 
experiments has been made with Conway, and these are 
fully reported in Part V. of the Proceedings. " 

The following are the results of two sittings given entire : ^ 

April 2$, 1883. 

Present: Mr. Guthrie, Mr. Birchall, Principal Kendall, M.A., Mr. E. 
Davies, F.C.S.; and Miss R— d, Miss J., Miss E., and Miss R. 



Agent. 



MissR. 



All present. 
All present. 
All present. 



All present. 



Percipient. 



MissE. 

Miss R 
Miss R 
Miss R. 



Miss R. 



Object. 



■ Q " named the first . . . 
then " P." The other 
letters beginning with 
the U named correctly 
at the first answer. 

' Is it a diamond ?" 

' Is it dark green? Can't 
see the shape." 

■ Is it yellow? . . . does 
not seem to be all yel- 
low . . . only one part 
of it . . . Can't see the 
shape well ... all con- 
fused ... Do not know 
what it is ... seem to 
be a lot of stems . . . 
It looks like this " (tra- 
cing an imaginary curve 
in the air), "with claws" 
(the percipient here 
shaped her fingers like 
claws). 

' Is it green? ... I can 
see something, like with 
a lot of branches . . . 
Can't count them — look 
too many — like a long 
stem— so — " (tracing a 

1 Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. i., Part iv., pp. 
367-8. 



Word " Puella," 
letter by letter. 



A diamond of blue 
silk on black 
satin. 

A dark green 
circle of silk on 
satin. 

A terra-cotta 
meerschaum 
pipe, glazed at 
the mouthpiece ; 
the stem joined 
to the bowl by a 
carved bird's 
claw. 



A small toy dog, 
colored light 
brown, with tail 
extended, and in 
the act of leap- 



Result. 



IT IS AN ORANGE 



297 



Agent. 


Percipient. 


Object. 


Result. 








horizontal line in the air) 








"with things down" 








(tracing lines downward). 








" Looks to be a lighter 








color now . . . not green 








as at first, . . . but now 








it looks like an animal. 








Can't see any more." 


All present. 


Miss R 


A dark crimson 


" Is it round? ... a dark 






apple, brought 


red shade , . like a knob 






in by Mr. B., 


off a drawer. . . It is an 






who had been 


apple." 






out for some ob- 








jects that had 








not been pre- 








viously thought 
of. 
An orange 




All present. 


Miss R 


"It is not another apple . . . 








it is an orange." 


All present. 


Miss R.... 


An electroplated 


"Is it very bright . . . 






teaspoon. 


either steel or silver . . . 
is it a spoon ? " 


MissE 


MissR.... 


A bright steel 


"It is something very 






door key. 


bright — and round ... Is 
it a brooch ? . . . Silver, 
I think." 


MissE 


Miss R.... 


A red ivory ball . . 


"Is it yellow? " 


Mr. B 


Miss E 


A cross of yellow 
silk on black 
satin. 


No answer. 


MissR 


MissR.... 


The same 


"It looks light . . . yellow 
like. Seems like a lot 
of rings . . . Is it round? 
. . Can't see any shape." 


MissR..... 


Miss E . . . 


"Tom." All the 


" Are there three letters ? 






letters fixed up 


. . . one is an . . . 






to be read at 


one is a ' stroky ' letter 






once. 


... Is it T? . . . oh, 
it's Tom." 


None 


Miss R. 


A gold watch. 


A failure. 




placed i n 


Miss R. was to 






the next 


describe this 






room with 


from the next 






Mr. B. 


room — Mr. B. 
taking her de- 
scription down. 




Miss R— d.. 


Miss R.... 


A jug, cut out in 


" Can not see any color , . . 






white cardboard. 


looks all Hght . . . Is it 
a cup? There is a handle; 
oh, it is a jug." 


Miss R— d.. 


MissR..,. 


Afive-barredgate, 


" Same color as the last . . . 






cut out in card- 


seem to be lines across 






board. 


... do not know what 
it is . . . seems to be 
nothing but lines." 



298 SERIES OF TWELVE DRAWINGS 



Agent. 



Percipient. 



Object. 



Result. 



Miss R— d. 



Miss R— d. 



Miss R. 



MissR. 



All present. 
Miss R— d.. 



Miss R. 
MissR. 



All present. 



Miss R. 



An electroplated 
egg cup. 



A toy cat, white, 
with black 
stripes radiating 
from the back, 
which was darkly 
shaded. 



Six of diamonds.. 
Same 



A white toy bird. 



" Is it a narrow stem — go- 
ing on till it gets wide? 
... Is it a wine-glass? — 
Seems bright . . . seems 
to be silver." 

"Is it very dark? ... Is 
it a card ? . . . White all 
round . . . like with a 
black center . . . Seems 
to be crimped in and out. 
Is there more than one 
color in the center ? Do 
not know what it is — 
can't see any shape at 
all." 

" Is it yellow? " 

" Is it square? . . A card. 
Red . . . can not tell how 
many spots . . . seem to 
be two or three, one over 
the other . . . Diamonds. 
Can not see the number. 
Card seems moving 
about." 

"Is it white? . . . Seems 
to have no shape." Then 
placed in contact, first 
with Principal Rendall, 
second with Miss R — d, 
but no nearer approach 
made. The percipient 
had now been subject to 
a very long examination. 



A Series of Twelve Drawings by Thought- 
Transference * 

[The reproductions described in this paper are drawn by 
impression. The experiments were conducted by Malcolm 
Guthrie, J. P., and James Birchall, honorary secretary of the 
Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool. In the 
twenty years since these experiments were made there have 
been a great number of confirmatory ones witnessed, giving, 
as Sir Oliver Lodge says, a sure scientific basis to telepathy.] 

" The originals of the following diagrams were for the 

1 Reported to S. P. R., by Malcolm Guthrie, Proceedings, vol. i., Part v., pp. 



TEST CONDITIONS 



299 



most part drawn in another room from that in which the 
' subject ' was placed. The few executed in the same room 



NO. X. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 



NO. I. REPRODUCTION. 





Mr. Guthrie and Miss E. No contact. 



NO. 2. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 



NO. 2. REPRODUCTION. 





Mr. Guthrie and Miss E. No contact. 



were drawn while the ' subject was blindfolded, at a dis- 
tance from her, and in such a way that the process would 



300 WONDERFULLY SUCCESSFUL 

have been wholly invisible to her or any one else, even had 
an attempt been made to observe it. During the process of 



NO. 3. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 



NO. 3. REPRODUCTION, 




Mr. Guthrie and Miss E. 
No contact. 




NO. 4. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 




NO. 4. REPRODUCTION. 




Mr. Guthrie and Miss B. 
No contact. 



transference, the * agent * looked steadily and in perfect 
silence at the original drawing, which was placed upon an 



RECIPIENT BLINDFOLDED 



301 



intervening wooden stand; the * subject' sitting opposite to 
him, and behind the stand, blindfolded and quite still. The 



No. 5. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 



NO. 5, REPRODUCTION. 





Mr. Guthrie and Miss E. 
No contact. 



NO. 6. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 




Mr. Guthrie and Miss E. No contact. 

No. 6. REPRODUCTION. 




Miss E. almost directly said, "Are you thinking of the bottom of the sea, with 
shells and fishes ? " and then, " Is it a snail or a fish ?"— then drew as above. 

* agent ' ceased looking at the drawing, and the blindfolding 
was removed, only when the * subject ' professed herself 



302 



FRAUD IMPOSSIBLE 



ready to make the reproduction, which happened usually in 
times varying from half a minute to two or three minutes. 
Her position rendered it absolutely impossible that she should 
glimpse at the original. She could not have done so, in fact, 



No. 7. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 




Mr, Gurney and Miss R. Contact for half a minute before the reprodnction 
was drawn. 



No. 7. REPRODUCTION. 




without rising from her seat and advancing her head several 
feet; and as she was almost in the same line of sight as the 
drawing, and so almost in the center of the ' agent's ' field 
of observation, the slightest approach to such a movement 



UNDER CLOSEST OBSERVATION 303 

must have been instantly detected. The reproductions were 
made in perfect silence, and without the ' agent ' even fol- 
lowing the actual process with his eyes, tho he was of course 
able to keep the ' subject ' under the closest observation. 



NO. 8. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 



NO. 8. REPRODUCTION. 





Mr. Gurney and Miss R. No contact. 



No. g, ORIGINAL DRAWING. 




Mr. Birchall and Miss R. No contact. 

NO. 9. REPRODUCTION. 




Miss R. said she seemed to see a lot of rings, as if they were moving, and she could 
not get them steadily before her eyes. 

" In the case of all the diagrams, except those numbered 
7 and 8, the * agent ' and the ' subject ' were the only two 
persons in the room during the experiment. In the case of 
numbers 7 and 8, the ' agent ' and ' subject ' were sitting 



304 



A CONSECUTIVE SERIES 



quite apart in a corner of the room, while Mr. Guthrie and 
Miss E. were talking in another part of it. Numbers 1-6 



No. 10. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 



NO. 10. REPRODUCTION. 





Mr. Birchall and Miss R. No contact. 



No, II, ORIGIMAL DRAWING. 




Mr. Birchall and Miss E. No contact. 



are specially interesting as being the complete and consecu- 
tive series of a single sittting." 



TELEPATHY BEYOND DOUBT 305 

As already said, these experiments by the Society for Psy- 
chical Research, and the other experiments since made by 

NO. 12. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 




Mr. Steel and Miss R. No contact. 



NO. 12. REPRODUCTION. 




this society and by others, leave no reasonable doubt of the 
fact of telepathy or thought-transference. This being a fact, 



20 



3o6 EVIDENTIAL MISTAKES 



NO. 13. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 



NO, 13. REPRODUCTION. 





Mr. Steel and Miss E. Contact before the 
• reproduction was made. 



No. 14. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 



NO. 14. REPRODUCTION. 





Mr. Hughes and Miss E. Contact before Miss E. said, " A box or chair badly 

the reproduction was made. shaped " — then drew as above. 



TELEPATHY EXPLAINS ALL 307 

is there any need of the spirit hypothesis to explain psychic 
phenomena? Does not telepathy explain all? Let the 
reader apply telepathy as revealed in the above experiments to 
all the facts which have been given in this book, and to those 

NO. 15. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 




Mr. Hughes and Miss E. No contact. 

No. 15, REPRODUCTION. 




Miss E, said, "It is like a mask at a pantomime," and immediately drew as above. 

that are yet to be given, and then make answer for himself. I 
submitted this question to a spirit-control at a circle, to see 
what answer would be given by the curious intelligence that 
dominated there, and the response was prompt : 



3o8 



SOUL TALKING WITH SOUL 



" Foolish men, do you not see that what you call telepa- 
thy is the communication of soul with soul ? In telepathic 



NO. 16. ORIGINAL DRAWING. 




Mr. Hughes and Miss E. No contact. 



NO. 16. REPRODUCTION. 




experiments you are blunderingly using the method of com- 
munication which you will use when free from the body, 



A SPIRIT'S EXPLANATION 309 

and which the spirit world uses ordinarily in communicating 
thoughts direct to mortals. It is in this way we impress the 
mind of mortals. But go forward with your experiments. 
They are steps in the stairway that will give humanity by 
and by a glimpse of the reality of spirit communings. The 
sounds that reach your mind through the ear are v,^aves on 
your coarse atmosphere ; the sounds that reach your soul are 
waves that reach your spiritual hearing through waves on 
what you rightly may call thought ether. To the soul all 
languages are one. Mere physical utterances or lip talk do 
not reach us," 

Then we should carefully consider just how much weight 
should be given to this fact : The two names most closely 
connected with the investigation of the Society for Psychical 
Research have been those of Frederic Myers and Richard 
Hodgson. Both of these men carefully weighed the evi- 
dence brought to light in favor of telepathy and against the 
spiritual hypothesis. Both started in the investigation firmly 
convinced that there was no truth in the spiritual hypothesis, 
and both finally reached the point that telepathy explained 
much, but not all, and that there was solid reason for believ- 
ing that some of the phenomena could not be accounted for 
except on the spirit hypothesis. 

II 

CLAIRAUDIENCE 

Hearing Independent of the Ear — Socrates — Bible Prophets 
— -Joan of Arc — The Wife of an Officer on the Arctic 
Steamer 'Jeannette " — Hearing the Voice of a Brother a 
Thousand Miles Distant 

The hearing of voices in ways which can not be explained 
by any known law is a common psychic phenomenon. Often 
these voices seem to be in the mind, or subjective; at other 
times objective; often, very often, they are illusions, more 
or less insane. 



3IO SOCRATES'S SPIRIT GUIDE 

Students of classic history will recall the " invisible 
voice " that was to Socrates a guide all of his life, a voice he 
scrupulously obeyed, saying at one time : " I am, it seems, a 
prophet, but only just enough for my private use and bene- 
fit." Xenophon, in his "Memorabilia," makes the fact that 
Socrates heard this voice a proof that he was not an atheist ; 
and Plato records instances of this voice being heeded by 
Socrates. In obedience to it he was silent when a few words 
at his trial would have saved his life — silent, tho urged to 
speak by his friends. 

A story is told by Plutarch that illustrates how even 
in trivial matters it was believed that Socrates was thus 
guided. At one time he and his friends were out walking 
when this voice warned Socrates of danger. He called to his 
friends to turn back by another street. Some did so ; others 
went on and had a sad experience with a great herd of swine. 

Joan of Arc from childhood heard many voices and con- 
versed with them, and conformed her life to what she believed 
to be their instruction. Thus directed, though a simple- 
minded, uneducated, rustic girl, she baffled generals on the 
battle-field, and outwitted the highest dignitaries of church 
and state. Whence this extraordinary intelligence.'' From 
the subjective mind.'* Possibly. But what foundations have 
wefor this belief .-• Does it stand the test of Science? Science 
here must be as exacting in its demands as it is with Spirit- 
ualism. 

The Bible records many experiences with voices. Samuel 
is awakened out of his sleep by a voice calling, " Samuel, 
Samuel." The prophets constantly hear voices. Saul on 
his way to Damascus hears a "voice." Were these voices 
all subjective.? It seems not; for sometimes these voices 
are heard by many at the same instant, as when the mul- 
titude heard the voice that spake to Christ, some thinking 
"that it thundered." Can a subjective voice be heard by 
many different persons ? 

Do you say : " But the Bible voices are miracles " ? How 



"SIX BELLS— JEANNETTE LOST" 311 

do you know that they are miracles ? How do you know 
that they are not heard in strict accordance with some natural 
law that we have not as yet discovered ; that Christ and Paul 
and the prophets and Socrates and Joan of Arc presented 
the conditions that make it possible for these voices to be- 
come audible ? 

A few years ago the wife of one of the officers on board of 
Xhejeannette — the vessel sent by the New York Herald to 
explore the polar seas — wrote to me that one night she was 
suddenly awakened and was amazed to see her husband at 
her bedside. He said to her, " Count, count." She says 
that she heard distinctly a ship bell. She heard the word 
again, "Count." She counted six strokes, when he said, 
"Six bells, and Xh^Jeannette is lost," and the vision disap- 
peared. She wrote that " thQjeannette was lost at the time I 
had that vision." 

Two Persons in Brooklyn Hear at the Same Time the 
Voice of a Brother in Texas 

Miss Ella Stainthorp, who makes the following affidavit, 
lives in Brooklyn, N. Y, She is a woman of good standing. 
She and her friend, Miss O'Brien, kindly consented to put 
the facts in the form of an affidavit. I am indebted to 
Judge Dailey, who is well acquainted with the parties con- 
cerned, for this affidavit : 

"I, Ella Stainthorp, residing at No. 1015 Lafayette Ave- 
nue, Borough of Brooklyn, city of New York, being duly 
sworn, do depose and say : that I am of the age of thirty-five 
years and unmarried, and at the time of the occurrences here- 
inafter named resided at 1096 Lafayette Avenue aforesaid, 
with my mother, Ella Stainthorp, and my sister, Jennie 
Stainthorp, aged fifty-five years, and my brother, William, 
aged forty years. 

" We had a brother George, aged about fifty, who had 
been absent from home two years in the South. We had not 
heard from him for two years. We had written to him, 
directing our letters, some to Galveston, and others to Hous- 



312 HEARD A THOUSAND MILES 

ton, Texas. We received no replies, and after a while our 
letters all came back, and we were apprehensive that he had 
been drowned in the great flood at Galveston, Texas. 

" We finally decided to make one more effort, and sent a 
registered letter with a money order in it, payable to his 
order, and posted it to Houston, Texas, on the 25th day of 
February, 1903. 

" The evening that the letter was posted we were talking 
the matter over in the family, and my brother William said 
that he would himself write in the morning and see what he 
could do toward getting a reply from George. This was a 
cold night, and my brother William had in his room a gas- 
stove ; he kissed his mother good-night and retired, saying he 
was going to light the gas-stove and get the room warm, 
which he evidently did, intending to get up and undress him- 
self when the room was warm and turn off the gas, and with 
this intention he evidently lay down upon his bed and fell 
asleep, for in this position he was found dead between the 
hours of one and two the next morning. 

" The rest of the family retired, and between the hours 
of one and two o'clock in the morning I awoke with a strange 
feeling over me, being impelled from some strong impulse to 
get up and look out the door of my room into the hall ; and 
v/hen I did so I detected the odor of escaping gas. I went 
downstairs and examined the gas fixtures in the hall and in 
the parlor, and then I went to m,y brother's room, where I 
found the smell of gas was very strong. I knocked and called 
at the door, but could get no response ; the door was locked. 
So I called my sister Jennie, and we burst in the door, 
and found my brother William dead, lying upon the bed with 
his clothing on. 

"The third night after this occurrence, Miss Julia A. 
O'Brien, a neighbor and intimate friend, sat up with me as 
watcher of the corpse. After a while we both lay down ; I 
fell asleep, but Miss O'Brien kept awake. About three 
o'clock she awoke me, saying that somebody was calling me 
there by the door. Miss O'Brien arose and opened the door, 
looking into the hall, but found no one there; the lights were 
burning and everything was as it had been left. I raised 
myself up, and the voice came again, saying: 'Nell, Nell, 
letter.' The voice I heard I immediately recognized as the 
voice of my absent brother George. I arose from the bed 



A BROOKLYN EXPERIENCE 313 

and said : ' Julia, that is the voice of George, and he has my 
letter.' Miss O'Brien said she heard the voice as distinctly 
as I did. ' Nell ' is the name by which George usually called 
me. 

"Two days after hearing this voice we received a letter 
in answer to the one I had written to my absent brother 
George, saying that he had received the letter early on the 
morning of March 2, 1903, which it will be noticed was the 
morning when we heard the voice calling me at our home in 
Brooklyn. In his letter George asks : * Is there anything the 
matter with Will.? ' 

" I have made this statement by request, for the purpose 
of furnishing a fact to be investigated and determined as to 
the method or means by which this communication was re- 
ceived from my brother George, he having no knowledge of 
the decease of my brother William. 

" Ella Stainthorp. 

" Sworn to before me this 25th day of July, 1903. 

"Wm. W. Hulst, 
" Commissioner of Deeds of the City of New York, 
Residing in the Borough of Brooklyn. 

" State of New York ) 
County of Kings ) 

"Julia A. O'Brien, being duly sworn, deposes and says 
that she resides at iioo Greene Avenue, in the Borough of 
Brooklyn, N. Y. ; that she is the Julia A. O'Brien referred 
to in the foregoing affidavit made by Miss Ella Stainthorp ; 
that she has read the foregoing statement made by her and is 
familiar with the facts therein set forth, and that she believes 
the same is in all respects true; that it is true that she did 
distinctly hear a voice call the name, ' Nell, Nell ! ' as therein 
stated, while her friend. Miss Ella Stainthorp, was asleep in 
the same room, while she was watching with the corpse of 
her deceased brother William ; that this was on the early 
morning of the second day following the decease of the said 
William ; that the voice seemed to come from the hall into 
which the door opened to the room where she and Ella were 
at the time; that the voice was clear and distinct; that she 
awoke the said Ella and told her some one called her, and 
deponent at once arose and went to the door and opened it 



314 "THAT'S GEORGE'S VOICE" 

and looked out, and no one was there, the hall being lighted 
at the time. Neither did she hear anything. All was quiet. 
She returned to the room and then she heard the voice again 
distinctly and clearly call, ' Nell, Nell, letter.' Miss Stain- 
thorpe at once exclaimed, ' That's George's voice ; he has got 
my letter.' The voice sounded right by the door to our 
room. Julia O'Brien. 

" Sworn to before me this 25th day of July, 1903. 

" Wm. W. Hulst, 
" Commissioner of Deeds of the City of New York, 
Residing in the Borough of Brooklyn!^ 



A Wife Hears the Words of Her Wotmded Husband One 
Hundred and Fifty Miles Distant 

The following is published by the Society for Psychical 
Research : ' 

" We are acquainted with, but not at liberty to publish, 
the names in the first case, which is related by the wife of 
General R, 

" 'On September 9, 1848, at the siege of Mooltan, Major- 
General R., C.B., then adjutant of his regiment, was most 
severely and dangerously wounded, and, supposing himself 
dying, asked one of the officers with him to take the ring off 
his finger and send it to his wile, who at the time was fully 
one hundred and fifty miles distant, at Ferozepore. 

" ' On the night of September 9, 1848, I was lying on my 
bed, between sleeping and waking, when I distinctly saw my 
husband being carried off the field, seriously wounded, and 
heard his voice saying, " Take this ring off my finger, and 
send it to my wife." All the next day I could not get the 
sight or the voice out of my mind. In due time I heard of 
General R. having been severely wounded in the assault on 
Mooltan. He survived, however, and is still living. It was 
not for some time after the siege that I heard from Colo- 
nel L., the officer who helped to carry General R. off the 
field, that the request as to the ring was actually made to him, 
just as I had heard it at Ferozepore at that very time. — M. 
A. R.'" 

1 Proceedings, vol. i., Part i., pp. 30, 31. 



IS THE VOICE CARRIED DIRECT? 315 



A Prayer Converted into a Command 

Dr. Joseph Smith, leading physician of Warrington, Eng- 
land, gives the following from his own personal experience : ' 

" I was sitting one evening reading, and a voice came to 
me saying, ' Send a loaf to James Gandy's. ' Still I con- 
tinued reading, and the voice came to me again, ' Send a loaf 
to James Gandy's.' Still I continued reading, when a third 
time the voice came to me with greater emphasis, ' Send a 
loaf to James Gandy's ' ; and this time it was accompanied by 
an almost irresistible impulse to get up. I obeyed this im- 
pulse, and went into the village, bought a large loaf, and 
seeing a lad at the shop door, I asked him if he knew James 
Gandy's. He said he did; so I gave him a trifle and asked 
him to take the loaf there, and to say a gentleman had sent 
it. Mrs. Gandy was a member of my class, and I went down 
the next morning to see what had come of it, when she told 
me that a strange thing had happened to her last night. She 
said she wanted to put the children to bed, and they began to 
cry for food, and she had not any to give them ; for her hus- 
band had been for four or five days out of work. She then 
went to prayer, to ask God to send them something ; soon 
after which a lad came to the door with a loaf, v/hich he said 
a gentleman gave him to bring to her. I calculated, upon 
inquiry made of her, that her prayer and the voice which I 
heard exactly coincided in point of time. 

"Joseph Smith, M.D." 

Many personal experiences similar to the above were told 
me from time to time by the late Rev. Mr. Heydrick, a de- 
voted city missionary in Brooklyn, N. Y. The main pyschic 
problem to be solved in an incident of this kind is whether 
the cry or prayer is conveyed direct from the agent to the 
percipient or whether it comes through intelligences outside 
of the fiesh. 

' " Phantasms of the Living," vol. ii., pp. 123, 124. 



3i6 WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 

The Cry of a Drowning Boy Heard by His Mother 
AND Sister Thousands of Miles Away 

The account of this incident ' is from Commander T, 
Aylesbury (formerly of the Indian navy), of Sutton, Surrey, 
England. The vision of Commander Aylesbury we probably 
would be justified in regarding as wholly subjective, the 
scene being such a one as a drowning person might vividly 
imagine. 

In this case it will be observed that a number of persons 
heard the voice at the same time. If thought transference 
be the correct explanation of it, it would seem that this 
thought must have been impressed upon the different minds 
by something objective. Of course it is not the physical 
voice that is carried, but it is possible that intense psychic 
or mental excitement may make waves on something we 
may call psychic ether or thought ether, and that these waves 
enter the minds of all who are in harmony with the trans- 
mitting soul in some such way as we may imagine the 
waves produced by the transmitter of the wireless telegraph 
report themselves to the instruments attuned in harmony 
with the transmitter, be they one or a thousand. Wireless 
telegraphy serves me well as an illustration. Is this the ex- 
planation of this kind of phenomena, or is the explanation 
to be found in the hypothesis that the spirit world is all about 
us and to it distance is as nothing, and that this spirit world 
reports at times to us what is taking place to kindred souls 
at a distance.'' Here is the story as told by Commander 
Aylesbury : 

" ' The writer, when thirteen years of age, was capsized 
in a boat, when landing on the Island of Bally, east of Java, 
and was nearly drowned. On coming to the surface, after 
being repeatedly submerged, the boy called his mother. This 
amused the boat's crew, who spoke of it afterward, and jeered 
him a good deal about it. Months after, on arrival in Eng- 
land, the boy went to his home, and, while telling his mother 

» " Phantasms of the Living," vol. ii., pp. 227, 22S. 



VOICE CALLING "MOTHER" 317 

of his narrow escape, he said : " While I was under water, I 
saw you all sitting in this room; you were working some- 
thing white, I saw you all — mother, Emily, Eliza, and 
Ellen." His mother at once said : " Why yes, and I heard 
you cry out for me, and I sent Emily to look out of the win- 
dow, for I remarked that something had happened to that 
poor boy. " The time, owing to the difference of east longi- 
tude, corresponded with the time when the voice was heard.' 

" Commander Aylesbury adds in another letter : 

"' I saw their features (my mother's and sisters '), the 
room and the furniture, particularly the old-fashioned Vene- 
tian blinds. My eldest sister was seated next to my mother. ' 

" Asked as to the time of the accident. Commander Ayles- 
bury says : 

" ' I think the time must have been very early in the 
morning. I remember a boat capsized the day before and 
washed up. The mate said we would go and bring her off in 
the morning, but the exact time I can not remember. It 
was a terrible position, and the surf was awful. We were 
knocked end over end, and it was the most narrow escape I 
ever had — and I have had many ; but this one was so im- 
pressed on my mind with the circumstances — the remarks 
and jeers of the men — " Bo)'-, what was you calling for your 
mother for."* Do you think she could pull you out of Davey 
Jones's locker," etc., with other language I can not use.' 

"The following is an extract from a letter written to 
Commander Aylesbury by one of his sisters, and forwarded 
to us in 1883 : 

" ' I distinctly remember the incident you mention in your 
letter (the voice calling "Mother"); it made such an im- 
pression on my mind, I shall never forget it. We were sit- 
ting quietly at work one evening; it was about nine o'clock. 
I think it must have been late in the summer, as we had left 
the street door open. We first heard a faint cry of " Mother " ; 
we all looked up, and said to one another, "• Did you hear 
that.-* Some one cried out * Mother.' " We had scarcely 
finished speaking when the voice again called " Mother " 
twice in quick succession, the last cry a frightened, agonizing 
cry. We all started up, and mother said to me, " Go to the 
door and see what is the matter. " I ran directly into the 
street and stood some few minutes, but all was silent and not 
a person to be seen ; it was a lovely evening, not a breath 



3i8 CLAIRAUDIENCE COMMON 

of air. Mother was sadly upset about it. I remember she 
paced the room, and feared that something had happened to 
you. She wrote down the date the next day, and when you 
came home and told us how near you had been drowned, 
and the time of day, father said it would be about the time 
nine o'clock would be with us. I know the date and the 
time corresponded.' 

" [The difference of time at the two places is a little more 
than seven hours ; consequently nine in the evening in Eng- 
land would correspond with ' very early in the morning ' of 
the next day at the scene of the accident. But the incident 
happened too long ago for memory to be trusted as to the 
exactitude of the coincidence.] " 

This hearing of voices is a far more common experience 
than is usually believed. Of course, much of this class of 
phenomena is the creation of the imagination and much is 
simply coincidence, but there is a large remainder that must 
be dealt with on some other theory. 

Ill 

DISPLAY OF PSYCHIC FORCE INDEPENDENT 
OF MUSCULAR ACTION 

No physical effect without a cause is one of the funda- 
mental dicta of science ; but a scientist greatly errs who tells 
us that there can be a psychic effect without a cause, and 
he will greatly err should he undertake to explain mental and 
spiritual phenomena on a physical basis. The mind is a 
cause; but should any one say, because you can not find this 
cause by chemical analysis or by test of the scales or by the 
microscope, that it does not exist.-* He who would expect 
to explain a field of wheat by physical causes alone would 
go astray. One of the chief causes that we have a field of 
wheat instead of a field of thistles is the will of the farmer. 

In the study of psychic phenomena that exhibit themselves 
in physical ways, the claim seems reasonable that the inves- 
tigator should himself have a well-developed psychic nature. 



CROOKES'S ABIDING FAITH 319 

Soul interprets soul, as love interprets love, and music, 
music. This is a law that does not seem to have any excep- 
tion, but is often overlooked. 

In the study of psychic phenomena of the class called the 
"physical order," the physical scientist of course must recog- 
nize that these phenomena occur on the physical plane, and 
hence are to be examined by physical methods of investiga- 
tion to find the physical causes ; but unless he has other eyes, 
when he gets to the end of his investigations he will say sim- 
ply : " As far as I have got these are the causes ; the physical 
causes back of these I may find with more knowledge and 
with more research." Or he will say, "There is some trick 
here which I can not explain." He has eyes, but he sees 
not, and hence will be forever a skeptic. There will always 
be to his mind a cause still farther back. Such a one 
was never convinced by the marvels wrought by a Christ or 
an apostle. He could discern the coming changes of the 
weather, but not the signs of psychic movements. There 
are scientists who can look up and beyond. One who has 
great soul development may be none the less exacting with 
his crucible and microscope and spectrum, yet to him the soul 
of man is more manifest than the hair that covers the head, 
more manifest than the skin, flesh, and bone ; so to such a 
one God and the spirit world may be the most manifest of 
actualities. 

Experiments by Sir William Crookes 

It is well to bear in mind that Mr. Crookes utterly denies 
the statement that has been widely published, to the effect 
he now recognizes that he was wrong in his investiga- 
tions in the seventies which he at that time published in The 
Quarterly Journal of Science (himself the editor), and since in 
book form under the title " Crookes's Researches in Modern 
Spiritualism." In several recent utterances Mr. Crookes 
says that the facts which he recorded in those scientific in- 
vestigations he believes now were facts as much as he believed 



320 GUFFAW GREETED CROOKES 

then that they were facts, and he sees no reason to change his 
mind as to the good faith of the mediums through whom he 
made these experiments. Now Mr. Crookes, like many of the 
rest of us, would interpret these facts — at least many of them 
— from the viewpoint of telepathy. But intelligences out- 
side of the flesh, as well as inside of the flesh, may be able 
to use telepathy. Telepathy means simply a method by 
which mind communes with mind in a direct way or inde- 
pendent of the physical senses. This we can easily believe 
to be true whether the mind is in a body or outside of a 
body. 

Sir William Crookes is one of the three really great scien- 
tists living to-day in England; Lord Kelvin and Alfred Rus- 
sel Wallace are the other two. That was a bright galaxy of 
English scientists in 1870 : Darwin, Huxley, Tyndal, Thomp- 
son (Kelvin), Wallace, Crookes — and not the least brilliant 
star in it was Crookes. 

Those who remember thirty-three years back will recall 
easily the bombshell exploded by Crookes in the camp of 
scientists — the one to which he refers in his presidential 
address in 1898 at Bristol. Crookes had determined, with 
the approval of some of the most prominent of his scientific 
brethren, to investigate scientifically the so-called "spiritual 
or psychic phenomena " that were at that time making much 
noise in the world. In the July number, 1870, of The Quar- 
terly Joiuiial of Science, he published his first paper on "Ex- 
perimental Investigation of a New Force," announcing that 
his experiments had demonstrated to his mind the existence 
of a psychic force controlled by an intelligence unknown to 
science. 

The guffaw which greeted this announcement, the incre- 
dulity, derision, and persecution which followed, do not make 
a bright page in the history of modern science. 

Nothing could be more admirable than the spirit with 
which Mr. Crookes undertook these investigations. He was 
not then a Spiritualist, but a scientist in search of scientific 



CROOKES'S PURPOSE 321 

truth. Read carefully his explanation of his purposes and 
methods as published by himself at the outset of his investi- 
gations : ' 

" I consider it the duty of scientific men, who have learned 
exact modes of working, to examine phenomena which attract 
the attention of the public, in order to confirm their genuine- 
ness or to explain if possible the delusions of the honest and 
to expose the tricks of deceivers. . , . 

" A man may be a true scientific man, and yet agree with 
Professor de Morgan when he says : * I have both seen and 
heard, in a manner which would make unbelief impossible, 
things called spiritual, which can not be taken by a rational 
being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, 
or mistake. So far I feel the ground firm under me ; but 
when it comes to what is the cause of these phenomena, I 
find I can not adopt any explanation which has yet been sug- 
gested. . . . The physical explanations which I have seen 
are easy, but miserably insufficient. The spiritual hypothe- 
sis is sufficient, but ponderously difficult. ' 

" Regarding the sufficiency of the explanation, I am not 
able to speak. That certain physical phenomena, such as the 
movement of material substances and the production of sounds 
resembling electric discharges, occur under circumstances in 
which they can not be explained by any physical law at pres- 
ent known, is a fact of v/hich I am as certain as I am of the 
most elementary fact in chemistry. My whole scientific edu- 
cation has been one long lesson in exactness of observation, 
and I wish it to be distinctly understood that this firm con- 
viction is the result of most careful investigation. But I can 
not at present hazard even the most vague hypothesis as to 
the cause of the phenomena. Hitherto I have seen nothing 
to convince me of the truth of the * spiritual ' theory. In 
such an inquiry the intellect demands that the spiritual proof 
must be absolutely incapable of being explained away ; it must 
be so strikingly and convincingly true that we can not, dare 
not deny it. 

" Faraday says : 'Before we proceed to consider any ques- 
tion involving physical principles, we should set out with 
clear ideas of the naturally possible and impossible.' But 
this appears like reasoning in a circle ; we are to investigate 

1 Preface to early edition of Crookes's " Researches in Spiritualism." 
21 



322 "BE SURE OF FACTS" 

nothing till we know it to be possible, while we can not say 
what is impossible, outside pure mathematics, till we know 
everything. 

" In the present case I prefer to enter upon the inquiry 
with no preconceived notions whatever as to what can or can 
not be, but with all my senses alert and ready to convey in- 
formation to the brain ; believing, as I do, that we have by 
no means exhausted all human knowledge or fathomed the 
depths of all the physical forces, and remembering that the 
great philosopher already quoted said, in reference to some 
speculations on the gravitating force, ' Nothing is too won- 
derful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature ; 
and in such things as these experiment is the best test of 
such consistency.' 

" The modes of reasoning of scientific men appear to be 
generally misunderstood by Spiritualists with whom I have 
conversed, and the reluctance of the trained scientific mind 
to investigate this subject is frequently ascribed to unworthy 
motives. I think, therefore, it will be of service if I here 
illustrate the modes of thought current among those who in- 
vestigate science, and say what kind of experimental proof 
science has a right to demand before admitting a new depart- 
ment of knowledge into her ranks. We must not mix up the 
exact and the inexact. The supremacy of accuracy must be 
absolute. 

"The first requisite is to be sure of facts; then to ascer- 
tain conditions ; next, laws. Accuracy and knowledge of 
detail stand foremost among the great aims of modern scien- 
tific men. No observations are of much use to the student 
of science unless they are truthful and made under test con- 
ditions; and here I find the great mass of spiritualistic evi- 
dence to fail. In a subject which, perhaps, more than any 
other lends itself to trickery and deception, the precautions 
against fraud appear to have been in most cases totally in- 
sufficient, owing it would seem to an erroneous idea that to 
ask for such safeguards was to imply a suspicion of the hon- 
esty of some one present. We may use our own unaided 
senses, but when we ask for instrumental means to increase 
their sharpness, certainty, and trustworthiness under circum- 
stances of excitement and difficulty, and when one's natural 
senses are liable to be thrown off their balance, offense is taken. 

"In the countless number of recorded observations I have 



REALM OF MARVELS 



3^3 



read, there appear to be few instances of meetings held for 
the express purpose of getting the phenomena under test con- 
ditions, in the presence of persons properly qualified by scien- 
tific training to weigh and adjust the value of the evidence 
which might present itself. The only good series of test 
experiments I have met with were tried by the Count de 
Gasparin,^ and he, while admitting the genuineness of the 
phenomena, came to the conclusion that they were not due 
to supernatural agency. 

"The pseudo-scientific Spiritualist professes to know 
everything; no calculations trouble his serenity, no hard ex- 
periments, no long, laborious readings ; no weary attempts to 
make clear in words that which has rejoiced the heart and 
elevated the mind. He talks glibly of all sciences and arts, 
overwhelming the inquirer with terms like ' electrobiolo- 
gize,' ' psychologize,' * animal magnetism,' etc. — a mere play 
upon words, showing ignorance rather than understanding. 
Popular science such as this is little able to guide discovery 
rushing onward to an unknown future ; and the real workers 
of science must be extremely careful not to allow the reins 
to get into unfit and incompetent hands. 

" In investigations which so completely baffle the ordinary 
observer, the thorough scientific man has a great advantage. 
He has followed science from the beginning through a long 
line of learning, and he knows, therefore, in what direction 
it is leading ; he knows that there are dangers on one side, 
uncertainties on another, and almost absolute certainty on a 
third ; he sees to a certain extent in advance. But where 
every step is toward the marvelous and unexpected, precau- 
tions and tests should be multiplied rather than diminished. 
Investigators must work ; altho their work may be very small 
in quantity, if only compensation be made by its intrinsic 
excellence. But, even in this realm of marvels — this won- 
derland toward which scientific inquiry is sending out its 
pioneers — can anything be more astonishing than the deli- 
cacy of the instrumental aids which the workers bring with 
them to supplement the observations of their natural senses.^ 

" The Spiritualist tells of bodies weighing fifty or one 
hundred pounds being lifted up into the air without the inter- 
vention of any known force; but the scientific chemist is 

' It must be remembered that this was all said by Crookes in 1871, ten years 
before the Society for Psychical Research began its scientific investigations. 



324 WHAT SCIENCE ASKS 

accustomed to use a balance which will render sensible a 
weight so small that it would take ten thousand of them to 
weigh one grain; he is therefore justified in asking that a 
power, professing to be guided by intelligence, which will 
toss a heavy body up to the ceiling, shall also cause his deli- 
cately poised balance to move under test conditions. 

" The Spiritualist tells of tapping sounds which are pro- 
duced in different parts of a room when two or more persons 
sit quietly round a table. The scientific experimenter is 
entitled to ask that these taps shall be produced on the 
stretched membrane of his phonautograph. 

" The Spiritualist tells of rooms and houses being shaken, 
even to injury, by superhuman power. The man of science 
merely asks for a pendulum to be set vibrating when it is in 
a glass case and supported on solid masonry. 

" The Spiritualist tells of heavy articles of furniture mov- 
ing from one room to another without human agency. But 
the man of science has made instruments which will divide 
an inch into a million parts, and he is justified in doubting the 
accuracy of the former observations if the same force is power- 
less to move the index of his instrument one poor degree. 

" The Spiritualist tells of flowers with the fresh dew on 
them, of fruit, and living objects being carried through closed 
windows and even solid brick walls. The scientific investiga- 
tor naturally asks that an additional weight (if it be only the 
one- thousandth part of a grain) be deposited on one pan of his 
balance when the case is locked. And the chemist asks for the 
one-thousandth of a grain of arsenic to be carried through the 
sides of a glass tube in which pure water is hermetically sealed. 
" The Spiritualist tells of manifestations of power which 
would be equivalent to many thousands of ' foot-pounds,' ta- 
king place without known agency. The man of science, be- 
lieving firmly in the conservation of force, and that it is never 
produced without a corresponding exhaustion of something 
to replace it, asks for some such exhibitions of power to be 
manifested in his laboratory, where he can weigh, measure, 
and submit it to proper tests. ^ 

">In justice to my subject, I must state that, on repeating' these views to 
some of the leading 'Spiritualists' and most trustworthy 'mediums ' in England, 
they express perfect confidence in the success of the inquiry, if honestly carried 
out in the spirit here exemplified; and they have offered to assist me to the 
utmost of their ability, by placing their peculiar powers at my disposal. As far 
as I have proceeded, I may as well add that the preliminary tests have been satis- 
factory." 



ADDED WEIGHT WITHOUT CONTACT 325 

Mr. Crookes entered at once with rare intelligence upon 
his series of experiments, which lasted for several years. 
From time to time he published the results attained in The 
Quarterly Journal of Scieiue and elsewhere, and finally in 
book form. It is interesting to observe in the progressive \ 
publications the conviction growing slowly in his mind, first, 
that there is here a psychic force unrecognized by science; ,^ 
second, that this force is governed by an outside intelligence."' 
He found, what we all find who undertake a serious investi- 
gation, that this force is uncertain, seemingly capricious, ex- 
ceedingly difficult to investigate ; but he also found what to 
his mind was indisputable evidence that it exists. 

One year from the announcement of his purpose he pub- 
lished his second paper in The Quarterly. He had made 
many experiments with different mediums, especially with 
Daniel D. Home, v»^ho, he says, proved to be endowed in a 
remarkable way with this psychic force. His account of these 
various experiments is of absorbing interest and is marked 
by rare scientific skill and judgment. He scientifically 
demonstrated by carefully prepared apparatus that weight can 
be increased many pounds without physical contact. This 
he again and again tested by different experiments in his own 
house and through different mediums, and in the presence of 
scientific friends, until he was fully convinced of the fact. 
Those who care to follow psychic experiments when con- 
ducted by a master scientist and who can recognize the im- 
portance of facts when they come into contact with them 
should get and master the little book in which Mr. Crookes 
has published these experiments. Its title is Crookes's " Re- 
searches into Spiritualism." 

1 he opposition Mr. Crookes encountered from scientists 
after the publication of the first series of his experiments 
mentioned is instructive. He says : 

" I confess I am surprised and pained at the timidity or 
apathy shown by scientific men in reference to this subject. 



326 CROOKES'S PURPOSE 

Some little time ago, when an opportunity for examination 
was first presented to me, I invited the cooperation of some 
scientific friends in a systematic investigation ; but I soon 
found that to obtain a scientific committee for the investiga- 
tion of this class of facts was out of the question, and that I 
must be content to rely on my own endeavors, aided by the 
cooperation from time to time of a few scientific and learned 
friends who were willing to join in the inquiry. I still feel 
that it would be better were such a committee of known men 
to be formed, who would meet Mr. Home in a fair and un- 
biased manner, and I would gladly assist in its formation ; but 
the difficulties in the way are great. 

"A committee of scientific men met Mr. Home some 
months ago at St. Petersburg. They had one meeting only, 
which was attended with negative results ; and on the strength 
of this they published a report highly unfavorable to Mr. 
Home. The explanation of this failure, which is all they 
have accused him of, appears to me quite simple. Whatever 
the nature of Mr. Home's power, it is very variable and at 
times entirely absent. It is obvious that the Russian experi- 
ment was tried when the force was at a minimum. The same 
thing has frequently happened within my own experience. A 
party of scientific men met Mr. Home at my house, and the 
results were as negative as those at St. Petersburg. Instead, 
however, of throwing up the inquiry, we patiently repeated 
the trial a second and a third time, when we met with results 
which were positive." 

Mr. Crookes again and again had to defend himself against 
all manner of criticisms, some from his scientific brethren, 
and some from the press — all knew " just how the thing was 
done " without investigation better than a thorough scientist 
knew who was on the spot and applying the strictest scientific 
tests. The most common accusation was that he had be- 
come a Spiritualist, and was now seeking to get proofs for 
his belief. The truth is he was not then a Spiritualist. He 
started in the investigation believing the phenomena were 
tricks of legerdemain, hoodv>rinking the people, and that it 
was the duty of scientists, when an error becomes so preva- 
lent, to expose it. 



CROOKES EXPLAINS HIS POSITION 327 

Many further experiments were made by Sir William 
Crookes that demonstrated to his mind that physical forcfc. 
can be exerted without mechanical contact. He proved that 
it was not necessary for the medium Home even to touch the 
board connecting with the spring balance. He arranged 
devices that required contact only through water with the 
spring balance; the balance automatically recording the 
results. These experiments were to Mr. Crookes con- 
clusive that he was dealing with a force hitherto unknown 
to science, a force that was directed by some outside intel- 
ligence. But each publication of additional experiments 
brought upon him only additional ridicule, especially from 
his fellow scientists. He was compelled to explain again 
and again his object in these investigations : 

** Let me take the opportunity of explaining the exact posi- 
tion which I wish to occupy in respect to the subject of 
psychic force and modern Spiritualism. I have desired to 
examine the phenomena from a point of view as strictly 
physical as their nature will permit. I wish to ascertain 
the laws governing the appearance of very remarkable phe- 
nomena which at the present time are occurring to an almost 
incredible extent. That a hitherto unrecognized form of 
force — whether it be called psychic force or ;ir force is of little 
consequence — is involved in this occurrence is not with me 
a matter of opinion but of absolute knowledge; but the 
nature of that force, or the cause which immediately excites 
its activity, forms a subject on which I do not at present 
feel competent to offer an opinion. I wish, at least for the 
present, to be considered in the position of an electrician at 
Valentia, examining by means of appropriate testing instru- 
ments certain electrical currents and pulsations passing 
through the Atlantic cable ; independently of their causation, 
and ignoring whether these phenomena are produced by im- 
perfections in the testing instruments themselves — whether 
by earth currents or by faults in the insulation — or whether 
they are produced by an intelligent operator at the other end 
of the line. " 



328 CROOKES'S FINAL REPORT 

Mr. Crookes's Formal Report of His Four Years of Inquiry 
of ^^ Phenomena Called Spiritual ^ 

"But with all [mediums] I have taken such precautions as place 
trickery out of the list of possible explanations. Be it remembered that 
an explanation, to be of any value, must satisfy all the conditions of the 
problem," — Crookes in the final report. 

" I have nothing to retract. I adhere to my already published state- 
ments. Indeed, I might add much thereto." — Crookes in his address, in 
1898, as President of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science. 

" Like a traveler exploring some distant country, the 
wonders of which have hitherto been known only through 
reports and rumors of a vague or distorted character, so for 
four years have I been occupied in pushing an inquiry into 
a territory of natural knowledge which offers almost virgin 
soil to a scientific man. As the traveler sees in the natural 
phenomena he may witness the action of forces governed by 
natural laws, where others see only the capricious interven- 
tion of offended gods, so have I endeavored to trace the 
operation of natural laws and forces where others have seen 
only the agency of supernatural beings, owning no laws and 
obeying no force but their own free will. As the traveler 
in his wanderings is entirely dependent on the good-will and 
friendliness of the chiefs and the medicine men of the tribes 
among whom he sojourns, so have I not only been aided in 
my inquiry in a marked degree by some of those who possess 
the peculiar powers I have sought to examine, but have also 
formed firm and valued friendships among many of the recog- 
nized leaders of opinion whose hospitalities I have shared. 
As the traveler sometimes sends home, when opportunity 
offers, a brief record of progress — which record, being neces- 
sarily isolated from all that has led up to it, is often received 
with disbelief or ridicule — so have I on two occasions selected 
and published what seemed to be a few striking and definite 
facts ; but having omitted to describe the preliminary stages 
necessary to lead the public mind up to an appreciation of 
the phenomena and to show how they fitted into other ob- 
served facts, they were also met, not only with incredulity, 
but with no little abuse. And, lastly, as the traveler, when 

1 Quarterly Journal of Science, January, 1874. 



EXPERIMENTS AT HIS HOME 329 

his exploration is finished and he returns to his old associates, 
collects together all his scattered notes, tabulates them, and 
puts them in order ready to be given to the world as a con- 
nected narrative, so have I, on reaching this stage of the 
inquiry, arranged and put together all my disconnected ob- 
servations, ready to place before the public in the form of a 
volume. 

" The phenomena I am prepared to attest are so extraor- 
dinary and so directly oppose the most firmly rooted arti- 
cles of scientific belief — among others, the ubiquity and in- 
variable action of the force of gravitation — that even now, 
on recalling the details of what I witnessed, there is an 
antagonism in my mind between reason, which pronounces it 
to be scientifically impossible, and the consciousness that my 
senses, both of touch and sight — and these corroborated, as 
they were, by the senses of all who were present — are not 
lying witnesses when they testify against my preconceptions.^ 

" But the supposition that there is a sort of mania or de- 
lusion which suddenly attacks a whole roomful of intelligent 
persons who are quite sane elsewhere, and that they all con- 
cur to the minutest particulars in the details of the occur- 
rences of which they suppose themselves to be witnesses, 
seems to my mind more incredible than even the facts they 
attest. ... 

" I now proceed to classify some of the phenomena which 
have come under my notice, proceeding from the simple to 
the more complex, and briefly giving under each heading an 
outline of some of the evidence I am prepared to bring for- 
ward. My readers will remember that, with the exception 
of cases specially mentioned, the occurrences have taken 
place in my own house, in the light, and with only private 

1 "The following remarks are so appropriate that I can not forbear quoting 
them. They occur in a private letter from an old friend, to whom I had sent an 
account of some of these occurrences. The high position which he holds in the 
scientific world renders doubly valuable any opinion he expresses on the mental 
tendencies of scientific men. ' Any ititellecHial reply to your facts I can not see- 
Yet it is a curious fact that even I, with all my tendency and desire to believe 
spiritualistically, and with all my faith in your power of observing and your 
thorough truthfulness, feel as if I wanted to see for myself ; and it is quite pain- 
ful to me to think how much more proof I want. Painful, i say, because I see that 
it is not reason which convinces a man, unless a fact is repeated so frequently that 
the impression becomes like a habit of mind, an old acquaintance, a thing known 
so long that it can not be doubted. This is a curious phase of man's mind, and it 
is remarkably strong in scientific men — stronger than in others, I think. For this 
reason we must not always call a man dishonest because he does not yield to evi- 
dence for a long time. The old wall of belief must be broken by much battering.' " 



330 CLASSIFIES RESULTS 

friends present besides the medium. In the contemplated 
volume ^ I propose to give in full detail the tests and precau- 
tions adopted on each occasion, v^rith names of witnesses. I 
only briefly allude to them in this article. 

"CLASS I 

" The Movement of Heavy Bodies with Contact, but with- 
out Mechanical Exertion 

" This is one of the simplest forms of the phenomena ob- 
served. It varies in degree from a quivering or vibration of 
the room and its contents to the actual rising into the air of 
a heavy body when the hand is placed on it. The retort is 
obvious that if people are touching a thing when it moves, 
they push it or pull it or lift it; I have proved experimen- 
tally that this is not the case in numerous instances, but as a 
matter of evidence I attach little importance to this class of 
phenomena by itself, and only mention them as a preliminary 
to other movements of the same kind, but without contact. 

" These movements (and indeed I may say the same of 
every kind of phenomenon) are generally preceded by a pecul- 
iar cold air, sometimes amounting to a decided wind. I 
have had sheets of paper blown about by it, and a thermome- 
ter lowered several degrees. On some occasions, which I 
will subsequently give more in detail, I have not detected 
any actual movement of the air, but the cold has been so 
intense that I could only compare it to that felt when the 
hand has been within a few inches of frozen mercury. 

"CLASS II 

"The Phenomena of Percussive and Other Allied Sounds 

" The popular name of ' raps ' conveys a very erroneous 
impression of this class of phenomena. At different times 
during my experiments I have heard delicate ticks as with 
the point of a pin, a cascade of sharp sounds as from an in- 
duction-coil in full work, detonations in the air, sharp me- 
tallic taps, a cracking like that heard when a frictional machine 
is at work, sounds like scratching, the twittering as of a 
bird, etc. 

1 Mr. Crookes says that he never found time to complete the volume here 
promised. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the S. P. R., December, 
1889, he gave the public many of these additional facts. 



EXPERIMENTS WITH MISS FOX 331 

" These sounds are noticed with almost every medium, 
each having a special peculiarity ; they are more varied with 
Mr. Home, but for power and certainty I have met with no 
one who at all approached Miss Kate Fox. For several 
months I enjoyed almost unlimited opportunity of testing 
the various phenomena occurring in the presence of this lady, 
and I especially examined the phenomena of these sounds. 
With mediums generally it is necessary to sit for a formal 
seance before anything is heard; but in the case of Miss 
Fox it seems only necessary for her to place her hand on any 
substance for loud thuds to be heard in it, like a triple pulsa- 
tion, sometimes loud enough to be heard several rooms off. 
In this manner I have heard them in a living tree, on a sheet 
of glass, on a stretched iron wire, on a stretched membrane, 
a tambourine, on the roof of a cab, and on the floor of a 
theater. Moreover, actual contact is not always necessary; 
I have had these sounds proceeding from the floor, walls, 
etc., when the medium's hands and feet were held, when she 
was standing on a chair, when she was suspended in a swing 
from the ceiling, when she was enclosed in a v/ire cage, and 
when she had fallen fainting on a sofa. I have heard them 
on a glass harmonicon ; I have felt them on my own shoulder 
and under my own hands ; I have heard them on a sheet of 
paper, held between the fingers by a piece of thread passed 
through one corner. With a full knowledge of the numerous 
theories which have been started, chiefly in America, to ex- 
plain these sounds, I have tested them in every way that I 
could devise, until there has been no escape from the convic- 
tion that they were true objective occurrences not produced 
by trickery or mechanical means. 

" An important question here forces itself upon the at- 
tention. Are the movements and sotmds governed by intelli- 
gence ? At a very early stage of the inquiry it was seen that 
the power producing the phenomena was not merely a blind 
force, but was associated with or governed by intelligence ; 
thus the sounds to which I have just alluded will be repeated 
a definite number of times, they will come loud or faint, and 
in different places at request ; and, by a prearranged code of 
signals, questions are answered and messages given with 
more or less accuracy. 

" The intelligence governing the phenomena is sometimes 
manifestly below that of the medium. It is frequently in 



23^ HEAVY WEIGHTS LIFTED 

direct opposition to the wishes of the medium : when a de- 
termination has been expressed to do something which might 
not be considered quite right, I have known urgent messages 
given to induce a reconsideration. The intelligence is some- 
times of such a character as to lead to the belief that it does 
not emanate from any person present. 

" Several instances can be given to prove each of these 
statements, but the subject will be more fully discussed sub- 
sequently, when treating of the source of the intelligence, 

"CLASS III 
"The Alteration of Weight of Bodies 

" I have repeated the experiments already described in 
i}a\^ Journal in different forms and with several mediums, I 
need not further allude to them here. 

"CLASS IV 

"Movements of Heavy Substances when at a Distance from 

the Medium 

" The instances in which heavy bodies, such as tables, 
chairs, sofas, etc., have been moved, when the medium has 
not been touching them, are very numerous. I will briefly 
mention a few of the most striking. My own chair has been 
twisted partly round, while my feet were off the floor. A 
chair was seen by all present to move slowly up to the table 
from a far corner, when all were watching it ; on another 
occasion an armchair moved to where we were sitting, and 
then moved slowly back again (a distance of about three feet) 
at my request. On three successive evenings a small table 
moved slowly across the room, under conditions which I had 
specially prearranged, so as to answer any objection which 
might be raised to the evidence. I have had several repeti- 
tions of the experiment considered by the committee of the 
Dialectical Society to be conclusive, viz., the movement of 
a heavy table in full light, the chairs turned with their backs 
to the table, about a foot off, and each person kneeling on 
his chair, with hands resting over the backs of the chairs, 
but not touching the table. On one occasion this took place 
when I was moving about so as to see how every one was 
placed. 



UNQUESTIONABLE PROOF 332 



"CLASS V 

"The Rising of Tables and Chairs off the Ground, without 
Contact with any Person 

" A remark is generally made when occurrences of this 
kind are mentioned, Why is it only tables and chairs which 
do these things ? Why is this property peculiar to furni- 
ture ? I might reply that I only observe and record facts, and 
do not profess to enter into the why and wherefore; but 
indeed it will be obvious that if a heavy, inanimate body in 
an ordinary dining-room has to rise off the floor, it can not 
very well be anything else but a table or a chair. That this 
propensity is not specially attached to furniture, I have 
abundant evidence; but, like other experimental demonstra- 
tors, the intelligence or power, whatever it may be, which 
produces these phenomena can only work with the materials 
which are available. 

" On five separate occasions a heavy dining-table rose be- 
tween a few inches and one and one-half feet off the floor, 
under special circumstances which rendered trickery impos- 
sible. On another occasion a heavy table rose from the floor 
in full light, while I was holding the medium's hands and 
feet. On another occasion the table rose from the floor, not 
only when no person was touching it, but under conditions 
which I had prearranged so as to assure unquestionable proof 
of the fact. 

"CLASS VI 

"The Levitation of Human Beings 

" This has occurred in my presence on four occasions in 
darkness. The test conditions under which they took place 
were quite satisfactory, so far as the judgment was concerned ; 
but ocular demonstration of such a fact is so necessary to dis- 
turb our preformed opinions as to ' the naturally possible and 
impossible,' that I will here only mention cases in which the 
deductions of reason were confirmed by the sense of sight, 

" On one occasion I witnessed a chair, with a lady sit- 
ting on it, rise several inches from the ground. On another 
occasion, to avoid the suspicion of this being in some way 
performed by herself, the lady knelt on the chair in such 
manner that its four feet were visible to us. It then rose 



334 NO FACTS MORE STRONGLY PROVED 

about three inches, remained suspended for about ten sec- 
onds, and then slowly descended. At another time two chil- 
dren, on separate occasions, rose from the floor with their 
chairs, in full daylight, under (to me) most satisfactory con- 
ditions ; for I was kneeling and keeping close watch upon the 
feet of the chair, and observing that no one might touch them. 

" The most striking cases of levitation which I have wit- 
nessed have been with Mr. Home. On three separate occa- 
sions have I seen him raised completely from the floor of the 
room. Once sitting in an easy-chair, once kneeling on his 
chair, and once standing up. On each occasion I had full 
opportunity of watching the occurrence as it was taking 
place. 

" There are at least a hundred recorded instances of Mr. 
Home's rising from the ground, in the presence of as many 
separate persons, and I have heard from the lips of the three 
witnesses to the most striking occurrence of this kind — the 
Earl of Dunraven, Lord Lindsay, and Captain C. Wynne — 
their own most minute accounts of what took place. To 
reject th.e recorded evidence on this subject is to reject all 
human testimony whatever; for no fact in sacred or profane 
history is supported by a stronger array of proofs. 

"The accumulated testimony establishing Mr. Home's 
levitations is overwhelming. It is greatly to be desired that 
some person, whose evidence would be accepted as conclusive 
by the scientific world — if indeed there lives a person whose 
testimony in favor of such phenomena would be taken — 
would seriously and patiently examine these alleged facts. 
Most of the eye-witnesses to these levitations are now living, 
and would doubtless be willing to give their evidence. But 
in a few years such direct evidence will be difficult, if not 
impossible, to be obtained. 

"CLASS VII 

" Movement of Various Small Articles without Contact 
WITH ANY Person 

" Under this heading I propose to describe some special 
phenomena which I have witnessed. I can do little more 
here than allude to some of the more striking facts, all of 
which, be it remembered, have occurred under circumstances 
that render trickery impossible. But it is idle to attribute 



NO PREVIOUS PREPARATIONS 32S 

these results to trickery, for I would again remind my read- 
ers that what I relate has not been accomplished at the house 
of a medium, but in my own house, where preparations have 
been quite impossible. A medium, walking into my dining- 
room, can not, while seated in one part of the room with a 
number of persons keenly watching him, by trickery make 
an accordion play in my own hand when I hold it keys down- 
ward, or cause the same accordion to float about the room 
playing all the time. He can not introduce machinery which 
will wave window-curtains or pull up Venetian blinds e^ght 
feet off, tie a knot in a handkerchief and place it in a /^fr 
corner of the room, sound notes on a distant piano, cauF^ a 
card-plate to float about the room, raise a water-bot 'e? ;|i,id 
tumbler from the table, make a coral necklace rise on t ^j-^d, 
cause a fan to move about and fan the company, or se\ir''i 
motion a pendulum when enclosed in a glass case fiimly 
cemented to the wall. 

"CLASS VIII 

" Luminous Appearances 

" These, being rather faint, generally require the room to 
be darkened. I need scarcely remind my readers again that, 
under these circumstances, I have taken proper precautions 
to avoid being imposed upon by phosphorized oil or other 
means. Moreover, many of these lights are such as I have 
tried to imitate artificially, but can not. 

" Under the strictest test conditions I have seen a solid 
self-luminous body, the size and nearly the shape of a tur- 
key's egg, float noiselessly about the room, at one time higher 
than any one present could reach standing on tiptoe, and 
then gently descend to the floor. It was visible for more 
than ten minutes, and before it faded away it struck the table 
three times with a sound like that of a hard, solid body. 
During this time the medium was lying back, apparently in- 
sensible, in an easy-chair. 

" I have seen luminous points of light darting about and 
settling on the heads of different persons. I have had ques- 
tions answered by the flashing of a bright light a desired 
number of times in front of my face. I have seen sparks of 
light rising from the table to the ceiling, and again falling 
upon the table, striking it with an audible sound. I have 
had an alphabetic communication given by luminous flashes 



336 CROOKES SEES MATERIALIZATIONS 

occurring before me in the air, while my hand was moving 
about among them. I have seen a luminous cloud floating 
upward to a picture. Under the strictest test conditions I 
have more than once had a solid, self-luminous, crystalline 
body placed in my hand by a hand which did not belong to 
any person in the room. In the light I have seen a luminous 
cloud hover over a heliotrope on a side table, break a sprig 
off, and carry the sprig to a lady ; and on some occasions I 
have seen a similar luminous cloud visibly condense to the 
torn of a hand and carry small objects about. These, how- 
^r, more properly belong to the next class of phenomena. 

"CLASS IX 

\Tk Appearance of Hands, either Self-Luminous or Visible 
BY Ordinary Light 

"The forms of hands are frequently /£"// at dark seances 
or under circumstances where they can not be seen. More 
rarely I have seen the hands. I will here give no instances 
in v/hich the phenomenon has occurred in darkness, but will 
simply select a few of the numerous instances in which I 
have seen the hands in the light. 

" A beautifully formed small hand rose up from an open- 
ing in a dining-table and gave me a flower ; it appeared and 
then disappeared three times at intervals, affording me ample 
opportunity of satisfying myself that it was as real in appear- 
ance as my own. This occurred in the light in my own room, 
while I was holding the medium's hands and feet. 

" On another occasion a small hand and arm, like a baby's, 
appeared playing about a lady who was sitting next to me. It 
then passed to me and patted my arm and pulled my coat sev- 
eral times. 

" At another time a finger and thumb were seen to pick 
the petals from a flower in Mr. Home's buttonhole, and lay 
them in front of several persons who were sitting near him. 

" A hand has repeatedly been seen by myself and others 
playing the keys of an accordion, both of the medium's hands 
being visible at the same time, and sometimes being held by 
those near him. 

" The hands and fingers do not always appear to me to be 
solid and life-like. Sometimes, indeed, they present more 
the appearance of a nebulous cloud partly condensed into the 



DEMATERIALIZATION IN HAND 337 

form of a hand. This is not equally visible to all present 
For instance, a flower or other small object is seen to move; 
one person present will see a luminous cloud hovering over 
it, another will detect a nebulous-looking hand, while others 
will see nothing at all but the moving flower. I have more 
than once seen, first an object move, then a luminous cloud 
appear to form about it, and, lastly, the cloud condense into 
shape and become a perfectly formed hand. At this stage 
the hand is visible to all present. It is not always a mere 
form, but sometimes appears perfectly life-like and graceful, 
the fingers moving and the flesh apparently as human as that 
of any in the room. At the wrist or arm it becomes hazy, 
and fades off into a luminous cloud. 

" To the touch the hand sometimes appears icy cold and 
dead, at other times warm and life-like, grasping my own 
with the firm pressure of an old friend. 

" I have retained one of these hands in my own, firmly 
resolved not to let it escape. There was no struggle or 
effort made to get loose, but it gradually seemed to resolve 
itself into vapor, and faded in that manner from my grasp. 

"CLASS X 
"Direct Writing 

" This is the term employed to express writing which is 
not produced by any person present. I have had words and 
messages repeatedly written on privately marked paper, under 
the most rigid test conditions, and have heard the pencil 
moving over the paper in the dark. The conditions — pre- 
arranged by myself — have been so strict as to be equally con- 
vincing to my mind as if I had seen the written characters 
formed. But as space will not allow me to enter into full 
particulars, I will merely select two instances in which my 
eyes as well as ears were witnesses to the operation. 

" The first instance which I shall give took place, it is 
true, at a dark seance, but the result was not less satisfactory 
on that account. I was sitting next to the medium, Miss 
Fox, the only other persons present being my wife and a lady 
relative, and I was holding the medium's two hands in one 
of mine, while her feet were resting on my feet. Paper was 
on the table before us, and my disengaged hand was holding 
a pencil. 

22 



338 A LUMINOUS HAND 

" A luminous hand came down from the upper part of the 
room, and, after hovering near me for a few seconds, took the 
pencil from my hand, rapidly wrote on a sheet of paper, 
threw the pencil down, and then rose up over our heads, 
gradually fading into darkness. 

" My second instance may be considered the record of a 
failure. ' A good failure often teaches more than the most 
successful experiment.' It took place in the light, in my own 
room, with only a few private friends and Mr. Home present. 
Several circumstances, to which I need not further allude, 
had shown that the power that evening was strong. I there- 
fore expressed a wish to witness the actual production of a 
written message such as I had heard described a short time 
before by a friend. Immediately an alphabetic communica- 
tion was made as follows : * We will try.' A pencil and some 
sheets of paper had been lying on the center of the table ; 
presently the pencil rose up on its point, and after advancing 
by hesitating jerks to the paper fell down. It then rose 
and again fell. A third time it tried, but with no better 
result. After three unsuccessful attempts, a small wooden 
lath, which was lying near upon the table, slid toward the 
pencil, and rose a few inches from the table ; the pencil rose 
again, and, propping itself against the lath, the two together 
made an effort to mark the paper. It fell, and then a joint 
effort was again made. After a third trial the lath gave it 
up and moved back to its place, the pencil lay as it fell across 
the paper, and an alphabetic message told us : * We have 
tried to do as'you asked, but our power is exhausted.' 

"CLASS XI 

" Phantom Forms and Faces 

" These are the rarest of the phenomena I have witnessed. 
The conditions requisite for their appearance appear to be so 
delicate, and such trifles interfere with their production, that 
only on very few occasions have I witnessed them under sat- 
isfactory test conditions. I will mention two of these cases. 

" In the dusk of the evening, during a seance with Mr. 
Home at my house, the curtains of a window about eight 
feet from Mr. Home were seen to move. A dark, shadowy, 
semitransparent form, like that of a man, was then seen by 
all present standing near the window, waving the curtain 



A PHANTOM FORM 



3:^9 



with his hand. As we looked, the form faded away and the 
curtains ceased to move. 

"The following is a still more striking instance. As in 
the former case, Mr. Home was the medium. A phantom 
form came from a corner of the room, took an accordion in 
its hand, and then glided about the room playing the instru- 
ment. The form was visible to all present for many minutes, 
Mr. Home also being seen at the same time. Coming rather 
close to a lady who was sitting apart from the rest of the 
company, she gave a slight cry, upon which it vanished. 

"CLASS XII 

"Special Instances which seem to Point to the Agency of 
AN Exterior Intelligence 

" It has already been shown that the phenomena are gov- 
erned by an intelligence. It becomes a question of impor- 
tance as to the source of that intelligence. Is it the intelli- 
gence of the medium, of any of the other persons in the 
room, or is it an exterior intelligence ? Without wishing at 
present to speak positively on this point, I may say that 
while I have observed many circumstances which appear to 
show that the will and intelligence of the medium have much 
to do with the phenomena,^ I have observed some circum- 
stances which seem conclusively to point to the agency of an 
outside intelligence, not belonging to any human being in 
the room. Space does not allow me to give here all the 
arguments which can be adduced to prove these points, but I 
will briefly mention one or two circumstances out of many. 

" I have been present when several phenomena were going 
on at the same time, some being unknown to the medium. 
I have been with Miss Fox when she has been writing a mes- 
sage automatically to one person present, while a message to 
another person on another subject was being given alphabeti- 
cally by means of ' raps,' and the whole time she was convers- 
ing freely with a third person on a subject totally different from 
either. Perhaps a more striking instance is the following : 

" During a stance with Mr. Home a small lath, which I 
have before mentioned, moved across the table to me, in the 

> " I do not wish my meaning to be misunderstood. What I mean is, not that the 
medium's will and intelligence are actively employed in any conscious or dis- 
honest way in the production of the phenomena, but that they sometimes appear 
to act in an unconscious manner." 



J40 MORSE CODE USED 

light, and delivered a message to me by tapping my hand ; I 
repeating the alphabet, and the lath tapping me at the right 
letters. The other end of the lath was resting on the table, 
some distance from Mr. Home's hands. 

" The taps were so sharp and clear, and the lath was evi- 
dently so well under control of the invisible power which 
was governing its movements, that I said, ' Can the intelli- 
gence governing the motion of this lath change the character 
of the movements and give me a telegraphic message through 
the Morse alphabet by taps on my hand ? ' (I have every 
reason to believe that the Morse code was quite unknown to 
any other person present, and it was only imperfectly known 
to me.) Immediately I said this, the character of the taps 
changed and the message was continued in the way I had 
requested. The letters were given too rapidly for me to do 
more than catch a word here and there, and consequently I 
lost the message; but I heard sufficient to convince me that 
there was a good Morse operator at the other end of the line, 
wherever that might be. 

" Another instance. A lady was writing automatically 
by means of the planchette. I was trying to devise a means 
of proving that what she wrote was not due to * unconscious 
cerebration.' The planchette, as it always does, insisted 
that, altho it was moved by the hand and arm of the lady, the 
intelligence was that of an invisible being who was playing 
on her brain as on a musical instrument, and thus moving 
her muscles. I therefore said to this intelligence, ' Can you 
see the contents of this room 1 ' ' Yes,' wrote the planchette. 
' Can you see to read this newspaper ? ' said I, putting my 
finger on a copy of T/ie Times, which was on a table behind 
me, but without looking at it. ' Yes,' was the reply of the 
planchette. ' Well,' said I, * if you can see that, write the 
word which is now covered by my finger, and I will believe 
you.' The planchette commenced to move. Slowly and 
with great difficulty the word ' however ' was written. I 
turned round and saw that the word ' however ' was covered 
by the tip of my finger. 

" I had purposely avoided looking at the newspaper when 
I tried this experiment, and it was impossible for the lad}'-, 
had she tried, to have seen any of the printed words, for she 
was sitting at one table, and the paper was on another table 
behind, my body intervening. 



A BELL'S EXPLOIT 341 

"CLASS XIII 
"Miscellaneous Occurrences of a Complex Character 

" Under this heading I propose to give several occurrences 
which can not be otherwise classified, owing to their complex 
character. Out of more than a dozen cases I will select two. 
The first occurred in the presence of Miss Kate Fox. To 
render it intelligible, I must enter into some details. 

" Miss Fox had promised to give me a seance at my house 
one evening in the spring of last year. While waiting for 
her, a lady relative, with my two eldest sons, aged fourteen 
and eleven, were sitting in the dining-room where the seances 
were always held, and I was sitting by myself, writing in the 
library. Hearing a cab drive up and the bell ring, I opened 
the door to Miss Fox and took her directly into the dining- 
room. She said she would not go upstairs, as she could not 
stay very long, but laid her bonnet and shawl on a chair in 
the room. I then went to the dining-room door, and telling 
the two boys to go into the library and proceed with their 
lessons, I closed the door behind them, locked it, and (ac- 
cording to my usual custom at seances) put the key in my 
pocket. 

" We sat down, Miss Fox being on my right hand and 
the other lady on my left. An alphabetic message was soon 
given to turn the gas out, and we thereupon sat in total dark- 
ness, I holding Miss Fox's two hands in one of mine the 
whole time. Very soon a message was given in the follow- 
ing words, ' We are going to bring something to show our 
power ' ; and almost immediately afterward we all heard the 
tinkling of a bell, not stationary, but moving about in all 
parts of the room : at one time by the wall, at another in a 
further corner of the room, now touching me on the head, 
and now tapping against the floor. After ringing about the 
room in this manner for fully five minutes, it fell upon the 
table close to my hands. 

" During the time this was going on, no one moved and 
Miss Fox's hands were perfectly quiet. I remarked that it 
could not be my little handbell which was ringing, for I left 
that in the library. (Shortly before Miss Fox came, I had 
occasion to refer to a book, which was lying on a corner of a 
bookshelf. The bell was on the book, and I put it on one 



342 CROOKES'S SURE PROOF 

side to get the book. That little incident had impressed on 
my mind the fact of the bell being in the library.) The gas 
was burning brightly in the hall outside the dining-room 
door, so that this could not be opened without letting light 
into the room, even had there been an accomplice in the 
house with a duplicate key, which there certainly was not. 

" I struck a light. There, sure enough, was my own bell 
lying on the table before me. I went straight into the 
library. A glance showed that the bell was not where it 
ought to have been, I said to my eldest boy, * Do you know 
where my little bell is? ' ' Yes, papa,' he replied, * there it 
is,' pointing to where I had left it. He looked up as he said 
this, and then continued, ' No — it's not there, but it was 
there a little time ago.' * How do you mean.-* — has any one 
come in and taken it."*' ' No,' said he, ' no one has been in; 
but I am sure it was there, because when you sent us in here 
out of the dining-room, J. (the youngest boy) began ringing 
it so that I could not go on with my lessons, and I told him 
to stop.'. J. corroborated this, and said that, after ringing it, 
he put the bell down where he had found it. 

" The second circumstance which I will relate occurred 
in the light, one Sunday evening, only Mr. Home and mem- 
bers of my family being present. My wife and I had been 
spending the day in the country, and had brought home a 
few flowers we had gathered. On reaching home, we gave 
them to a servant to put them in water. Mr. Home came 
soon after, and we at once proceeded to the dining-room. 
As we were sitting down, a servant brought in the flowers 
which she had arranged in a vase. I placed it in the center 
of the dining-table, which was without a cloth. This was 
the first time Mr. Home had seen these flowers. 

" After several phenomena had occurred, the conversation 
turned upon some circumstances which seemed only expli- 
cable on the assumption that matter had actually passed 
through a solid substance. Thereupon a message was given 
by means of the alphabet : * It is impossible for matter to 
pass through matter, bat we will show you what we can do.' 
We waited in silence. Presently a luminous appearance 
was seen hovering over the bouquet of flowers, and then, in 
full view of all present, a piece of China-grass fifteen inches 
long, which formed the center ornament of the bouquet, 
slowly rose from the other flowers, and then descended to the 



MRS. CROOKES'S EXPERIENCE 343 

table in front of the vase between it and Mr. Home. It did 
not stop on reaching the table, but went straight through it, 
and we all watched it till it had entirely passed through. 
Immediately on the disappearance of the grass my wife, who 
was sitting near Mr. Home, saw a hand come up from under 
the table between them, holding the piece of grass. It 
tapped her on the shoulder two or three times with a sound 
audible to all, then laid the grass on the floor and disap- 
peared. Only two persons saw the hand, but all in the room 
saw the piece of grass moving about as I have described. 
During the time this was taking place, Mr. Home's hands 
were seen by all to be quietly resting on the table in front 
of him. The place where the grass disappeared was eighteen 
inches from his hands. The table was a telescope dining- 
table, opening with a screw ; there was no leaf in it, and the 
junction of the two sides formed a narrow crack down the 
middle. The grass had passed through this chink, which I 
measured and found to be barely one-eighth inch wide. The 
stem of the piece of grass was far too thick to enable me to 
force it through this crack without injuring it, yet we had 
all seen it pass through quietly and smoothly ; and on exam- 
ination it did not show the slightest signs of pressure or 
abrasion. " 



Sir William Crookes Sees a Man Resting in the 

Air 

Mr. Crookes gives the following description of a seance 
he attended at his brother's house — Mr. Walter Crookes : ^ 

^^ Present : Mr. D. D. Home (medium), Mrs. Douglas, 
Captain C, Mr. and Mrs. William Crookes, Mr, and Mrs. 
Wr. Crookes. 

" In the drawing-room, round the center-table. 

''''Phenomena: Strong vibrations of the cabinet behind 
Mr. Home ; continuous raps on the table ; very strong vibra- 
tions of the cabinet. Then a long silence. Mr. Home went 
to the piano. 

"On his return the vibrations recommenced; then there 
were powerful raps on the table in front of me. 

'* There were thumps on the table and then on the floor. 

1 Proceedings, S. P. R., vol. vi., pp. 125-7. 



344 SITTING ON AIR 

" I was touched on the knee. 

" I was touched again on the knee. The table then rat- 
tled about so violently that I could not write. 

" Mr. Home took the accordion in the usual manner. It 
played a tune. 

" Mrs. Douglas's handkerchief was taken from her lap by 
a hand visible to her and Mr, Home, the accordion playing 
beautifully all the time. A message was given : 

" ' Try less light.' 

The handkerchief moved about along the floor, visible to all. 
" Mr. Home nearly disappeared under the table in a cur- 
ious attitude, then he was (still in his chair) wheeled out from 



f«RW?C 



CAPTC 



IfUfW^c.; 




m^mQ* 



under the table still in the same attitude, his feet out in front 
off the ground. He was then sitting almost horizontally, 
his shoulders resting on his chair. 

" He asked Mrs. Wr. Crookes to remove the chair from 
under him as it was not supporting him. He was then seen 
to be sitting in the air supported by nothing visible. 

" Then Mr. H^ome rested the extreme top of his head on 
a chair, and his feet on the sofa. He said he felt supported 
in the middle very comfortably. The chair then moved away 
of its own accord, and Mr. Home rested flat over the floor 
behind Mrs. Wr. Crookes. 

" A stool then moved up from behind Mrs. Wr. Crookes 
to between her and Mr. Home. 

" Mr. Home then got up, and after walking about the 



IN BRIGHT LIGHT 



345 



room went to a large glass screen and brought it close up to 
me, and opened it out thus : 



5fi7££V. 



\ D.D.H / 



W. C. 




" Mr. Home then put his hands on the screen, and we 
had raps on the glass. (The gas was turned brightly up 
during these experiments.) 

"Then Mr. Home put his hand on one leaf of the screen, 
and I put my hand where I chose on the other leaf. Raps 
came from under my hand. 

" The screen was then put thus : 




" Mr. Home stood behind the screen and had the gaslight 
shining full on him. He rested his two hands lightly on 
the top of the center leaf of the screen. In this position 
we had the tablecloth moved, raps on the table in front of 
the screen, and raps on the glass leaves (either one at request). 
A lady's dress was pulled, and the chairs were shaken. 

" The screen was then folded up and laid horizontally on 



346 CONFIRMATORY EXPERIMENTS 

two chairs so as to form a glass table. Mr. Home sat at 
one side and I sat at the other side, by ourselves. The 
light was very good, and the whole of his legs and feet were 
easily seen through the screen, 

" Many experiments were then tried on this glass table. 
Raps came from it at my request where I desired. It was 
vibrated, and once raps came when Mr. Home was not touch- 
ing it. 

" The light was then lowered and the screen put aside. 

" The cushion from the sofa floated off it and came be- 
tween Mr. Home and Mrs. Wr. Crookes. 

" Mr. Home took the accordion, and it played ' Auld Lang 
Syne.' 

" Some one was seen standing behind Mrs. William 
Crookes. 

"Mrs. William Crookes had severe pain in her head. 
Mr. Home came behind her and mesmerized her and the 
pain went. 

" A message came to Mrs. Wr. Crookes. 

"Nothing more took place after this." 

It would be hopeless to expect that this description of 
the loss of all weight by Home would be believed on the tes- 
timony of even so great a scientific expert as is Sir William 
Crookes, if it were not confirmed by many other similar 
phenomena ; but space will permit me to give but one mon^ 
example. This I give on the testimony of a witness of high 
scientific standing, Lord Lindsay, member of the Council of 
the Royal Society, England. Lord Lindsay writes : 

" I was sitting with Mr. Home and Lord Adare, and a 
cousin of his. During the sitting Mr. Home went into a 
trance, and in that state was carried out of the window in 
the room next to where we were and was brought in at our 
window. The distance between the windows was about seven 
feet six inches, and there was not the slightest foothold be- 
tween them, nor was there more than a twelve-inch projection 
to each window, which served as a ledge to put flowers on. 

" We heard the window into the next room lifted up, and 
almost immediately after we saw Home floating in the air 
outside our window. 



A MARVEL OF MARVELS 347 

" The moon was shining full into the room ; my back was 
to the light, and I saw the shadow on the wall of the window- 
sill, and Home's feet about six inches above it. He remained 
in this position for a few seconds, then raised the window and 
glided into the room, feet foremost, and sat down. 

" Lord Adare then went into the next room to look at the 
window from which he had been carried. It was raised about 
eighteen inches, and he expressed his wonder how Mr, 
Home had been taken through so narrow an aperture. 

" Home said, still entranced, * I will show you ' ; and then 
with his back to the window he leaned back, and was shot out 
of tJie aperture, head first, with the body rigid, and then re- 
turned quite quietly, 

" The window is about seventy feet from the ground, I 
very much doubt whether any skilful tight-rope dancer would 
like to attempt a feat of this description, where the only 
means of crossing would be by a perilous leap or being borne 
across in such a manner as I have described, placing the 
question of the light aside. Lindsay. 

"July 14, 1871." 

The " Theory of Fraud " is usually based on the assump- 
tion that the phenomena are all the results of tricks, clever 
mechanical arrangements, or legerdemain; the mediums are 
impostors, and the rest of the company little less than fools, 

" It is obvious," says Mr, Crookes, " that this theory can 
only account for a very small proportion of the facts ob- 
served, I am willing to admit that some so-called mediums 
of whom the public have heard much are arrant impostors, 
who have taken advantage of the public demand for Spiritual- 
istic excitement to fill their purses with easily earned guineas ; 
while others who have no pecuniary motive for imposture are 
tempted to cheat, it would seem, solely by a desire for no- 
toriety, I have met with several cases of imposture, some 
very ingenious, others so palpable that no person who has 
witnessed the genuine phenomena could betaken in by them. 
An inquirer into the subject finding one of these cases at his 
first initiation is disgusted with what he detects at once 
to be an imposture ; and he not unnaturally gives vent to his 
feelings, privately or in print, by a sweeping denunciation 
of the whole genus ' medium.' Again, with a thoroughly 



348 ONLY GOOD EXPLANATION 

genuine medium, the first phenomena which are observed are 
generally slight movements of the table and faint taps under 
the medium's hands or feet. These of course are quite easy 
to be imitated by the medium or any one at the table. If, as 
sometimes occurs, nothing else takes place, the skeptical ob- 
server goes away with the firm impression that his superior 
acuteness detected cheating on the part of the medium, who 
was consequently afraid to proceed with any more tricks in 
his presence. He, too, writes to the newspapers exposing the 
whole imposture, and probably indulges in moral sentiments 
about the sad spectacle of persons, apparently intelligent, 
being taken in by imposture which he detected at once. 

" There is a wide difference between the tricks of a pro- 
fessional conjurer, surrounded by his apparatus and aided by 
any number of concealed assistants and confederates, deceiv- 
ing the senses by clever sleight-of-hand on his own platform, 
and the phenomena occurring in the presence of Mr. Home, 
which take place in the light, in a private room that almost 
up to the commencement of the seance has been occupied as 
a living-room, and surrounded by private friends of my own, 
who not only will not countenance the slightest deception, 
but who are watching narrowly everything that takes place. 
Moreover, Mr. Home has frequently been searched before 
and after the seances, and he always offers to allow it. Dur- 
ing the most remarkable occurrences I have occasionally 
held both his hands and placed my feet on his feet. On no 
single occasion have I proposed a modification of arrange- 
ments for the purpose of rendering trickery less possible 
which he has not at once assented to, and frequently he has 
himself drawn attention to tests which might be tried. 

" I speak chiefly of Mr. Home, as he is so much more 
powerful than most of the other mediums I have experi- 
mented with. But with all I have taken such precautions as 
place trickery out of the list of possible explanations. 

" Be it remembered that an explanation to be of any value 
must satisfy all the conditions of the problem. It is not 
enough for a person, who has perhaps seen only a few of the 
inferior phenomena, to say, ' I suspect it was ail cheating,' 
or, ' I saw how some of the tricks could be done.' " 



INCIPIENT INSANITY 349 



Professor ZSllner's Experiments at Leipsic* 

How Much Credibility is to be Given to These Experi- 
ments f — The Breaking of a Pole Requiring the Strength 
of Two Horses — The Movements and Disappearance 
of a Table 

Zollner, at the Leipsic University, Germany, was a pro- 
fessor of physics as well as of astronomy, and ranked among 
the first physicists in the world at the time of his death in 
1882. His was a life trained to scientific observation. No 
one has ever questioned his integrity. The charge of " in- 
cipient insanity " may be dismissed as groundless, as the 
convenient <2:/rz>n conclusion of those of his fellow scientists 
who could not reconcile sanity with what Zollner reported he 
saw. The facts that he continued for years after these ex- 
periments as professor at Leipsic and the letter of the Head 
of the University (see page 276) may be regarded as answer 
to this charge. Zollner somewhat weakened the evidential 
value of his investigations by pushing as vigorously as he 
did his theory of explanation — that of the fourth dimension. 
Yet Darwin had a working hypothesis in his investigation of 
nature, that of evolution. Do scientists insist that this fact 
should rule Darwin out of court as a witness .-' Certainly 
not. Zollner describes physical phenomena from " raps " 
upward as taking place in his presence, in his own house, 
and under the conditions he himself prescribed. 

Slade was a stranger to Professor Zollner and a stranger 
in Leipsic, having reached there but the day before. He 
came alone. On the next day after his arrival he called on 
Zollner, and the following incident occurred in the presence 
of Professors Weber, Scheibner, and Zollner, The throwing 
of the knife and the slate-writing may be easily explained 

1 The descriptions of these sittings were written by Professor ZSUner and were 
published in Zollner's "Transcendental Physics," translated by Massey, 



2SO GREAT DISPLAY OF FORCE 

on the theory of sleight-of-hand ; but how explain the break- 
ing of the pole? 

" While experiments similar to those first described were 
being successfully made, a violent crack was suddenly heard, 
as in the discharging of a large battery of Leyden jars. On 
turning, with some alarm, in the direction of the sound, the 
before-mentioned screen fell apart in two pieces. The 
wooden screws, half an inch thick, were torn from above and 
below, without any visible contact of Slade with the screen. 
The parts broken were at least five feet removed from Slade, 
who had his back to the screen ; but even if he had intended 
to tear it down by a cleverly devised sideward motion, it 
would have been necessary to fasten it on the opposite side. 
As it was, the screen stood quite unattached, and the grain 
of the wood being parallel to the axis of the cylindrical 
wooden fastenings, the wrenching asunder could only be 
accomplished by a force acting longitudinally to the part in 
question." 

Professor Zollner further speaks of the breaking of this 
pole — and let it be remembered that the professor was a 
trained physicist, one of the ablest of the v/orld's specialists : 

" In all phenomena in the presence of Spiritualistic 
mediums hitherto observed and published, it is almost ex- 
clusively the modus operandi that has led to controversies 
concerning the explicability of the phenomena from the stand- 
point of our conception of nature heretofore. An argument 
has been founded on the fact that things occur also in the 
presence of conjurers in which the modus operandi of the 
performer is concealed from us, and thus the causal connec- 
tion between the muscular movements of the artist and the 
effect produced by him is so interrupted (apparently) that for 
the spectator there arises the impression of the inexplicable, 
and therefore of the miraculous. This argument, however, 
has for its premise the understood and thus unexpressed pre- 
supposition that the muscular force requisite for the produc- 
tion of these tricks of the conjurer remains within those 
limits which according to experience are prescribed to human 
beings by the organization of their bodies. 

" If, for example, one man alone were to perform a trick 



STRENGTH OF TWO HORSES 351 

requiring the strength of two horses, in relation to such a 
result the above argument would be no longer admissible, 
since then there would be no conceivable modus operandi 
able to produce the effect. 

" In the case of my bed-screen I am fortunately able to 
establish such an instance. 

" The material of the frame was alder wood ; the screen 
was new, and had been bought by me about a year before at 
the furniture-shop already mentioned by me. The cross-cut 
of the two pieces of wood which were longitudinally ^ and 
simultaneously rent, above and below, amounted to 3.142 
cubic centimeters (about i^ inches in diameter). According 
to the experiments of Ettelwein,'^ the amount of pull requis- 
ite for the longitudinal rending of such a piece of alder wood 
is 4,957 kilograms, or about 99 cwts. ; since, therefore, two 
such rods have been simultaneously rent, for the production 
of this effect a force of pull {Zugkraff) amounting to 298 
cwts. must have been used. 

" In order, now, to compare the force here given with 
that exercised by men, in what follows I quote literally the 
appended information from Gehler's ' Dictionary of Physics, ' 
vol. ii., p. 976 : 

" * The muscles of the thigh hold upright the body, whose 
weight can be put at 1 50 lbs. ; and since there are muscles 
which bear 300 lbs. in addition, the weight of pressure al- 
ready amounts in itself to 450 lbs. To cite, however, some 
examples only of extraordinary strength, I have myself known 
a man who without preparation and on an accidental occasion 
carried six Rhenish cubic feet (Brunswick bushels) of wheat, 
and upon this a large, strong man, up a flight of about eight 
steps. This weight of itself can be estimated at 450 lbs., 
and, with the added weight of the bearer, in the whole at 
600 lbs., resting on the feet and legs of that man. 

1 " That the pull {zug) upon the screen has in fact acted longitudinally only is 
still evidenced quite independently of the above-mentioned direction of the fibers 
at the places of division. For between the two strong beams for connecting the 
movable parts of the frame are two thin, parallel pieces of wood for securing the 
green woolen stuff with which the screen is overlaid. These thm pieces are - 
fastened without glue to the vertical supports loosely in holes about 25 millimeters 
deep ; if, therefore, instead of a longitudinal pull a rupture {bruch) has taken place, 
these two pegs must have been broken away, which was not the case.' 

* " Handbook of Statistics of Solid Bodies, with particular regard in their ap- 
plication to Architecture," vol. iii.. Berlin, 1808. A very complete review of earlier 
experiments is given in the " Edinburgh Encyclopedia." Compare Gehler's " Dic- 
tionary of Physics," vol. ii., p. 138. 



%.<'W*w 



^S^ FAR BEYOND SLADE'S STRENGTH 

" ' There are, moreover, many instances of a vastly greater 
exertion of strength produced by the extensor muscle of the 
leg, like that mentioned by Desaguliers, of a man who thus 
tore a rope which sustained a weight of i,8oo lbs. = i8 
cwts. ; he himself and some others having raised 1,900 
lbs. weight by means of a strap hanging down over the 
hips, by bringing the somewhat bent leg into a straight 
direction. 

" ' I have myself seen a strong man raise 2,000 lbs., by 
placing himself in a bent posture under a board, whereon 
this weight rested, bringing its point of gravity somewhere 
near the hips, supporting the arms on the knees, and then 
straightening the bent legs. The muscles here applied are, 
among all in the human body, able to overcome the greatest 
weights, and so therefore a man raises much heavier burdens 
in the way described than on the shoulders or with the upper 
part of the body, if at the same time the backbone has to be 
straightened. 

" ' I myself knew a man who raised a hundredweight from 
the chair on to the table on the little finger of the right hand 
with outstretched arm ; and even this instance is by no means 
the strongest, judging from credible narratives; so I saw the 
above-mentioned Hercules, who raised the 2,000 lbs., grasp 
with his right hand a perpendicular rod of iron, sufficiently 
secured, and with outstretched arm keep his whole body 
sustained in a horizontal position for about five seconds with- 
out other support. * 

" Comparing the above with the force 198 cwts., requisite 
for the rending of my bed-screen, it will be seen that the 
strength of the Hercules referred to would have to be mul- 
tiplied by nearly 10 — applied in a favorable position — to pro- 
duce the physical manifestation which took place in Slade's 
presence without contact. Since 'the force in the move- 
ment of weights by carrying on the flat ' is with a horse on 
the average about five times greater than that of a man, ' so 
for the production of the mechanical effect in question in 
Slade's presence about two horses would have been necessary. 
Even if Slade should be assumed to be a giant, and the fac- 

' Gehler's " Dictionary of Physics," vol. v., p. 1004. Literally, " There is there- 
fore in the movement by carrying of weights on the flat, a force: 
Of a man = i according to Coulomb. 
Of a horse = 4.8 according to Brunacci. 
Of a horse = 6.1 according to Wessermann." 



A SCIENTIST'S CREDULITY 253 

ulty ascribed to him of moving so swiftly in space that my 
friends Wilhelm Weber, Scheibner, and I myself were pre- 
vented by this rapidity from perceiving how he tore asunder 
the screen by his own action, yet will rational skeptics be 
disposed to renounce such an ' explanation ' after the state- 
ments just given. 

" But in case I should be reproached with having in the 
above supposition caricatured the so-called ' rational ' attempt 
at explanation, I may observe that one of my esteemed col- 
leagues who, on the day after the sitting in question, was 
himself present with two other of our colleagues at a sitting 
with Mr. Slade, sought quite seriously to appease his scien- 
tific conscience by the supposition that Slade carried dyiia- 
mite about with him for the purpose of such strong mechani- 
cal manifestations, concealing it in some clever fashion in 
the furniture, and then with equal adroitness exploding it by 
a match. This explanation reminded me of one by which a 
peasant in the remote part of Pomerania attempted to ac- 
count for the motion of a locomotive. To mitigate in some 
degree the terror which the first sight of a self-moving loco- 
motive must naturally excite in rude and ignorant men, the 
priest of the village in question tried to explain to his par- 
ishioners the mechanism and effect of a steam-engine. When 
now the pastor had conducted his peasants, enlightened by 
his ' popular lecture,' ^ to the railroad just as the first train 
rushed by, they all shook their heads incredulously, and an- 
swered the priest : * No, no, parson; there are horses hidden 
inside ! ' That, in fact, within all bodies electrical forces are 
potentially latent, which, suddenly released, could exceed the 
strongest effects of a charge of dynamite, I have already re- 
marked in the first volume as follows : ' It is proved that the 
electrical energy present in the mass of one milligram "^ of 
water (or any other body) would be able, if it could be sud- 
denly set free, to produce the amount of motion which the 
explosion of a charge of 16.7 kilograms ^ of powder in the 
largest of cannons now existing can impart to a shot of 520 
kilograms.' 

" In the presence of spiritualistic mediums there must 



1 For reasous given in other parts of his treatises, Professor ZSllner holds 
popular expositions of scientific subjects in small esteem.— TR. 
» = O.OIS43 grain. 
' 1 kilogram == 2.2046212 lbs. 

23 



354 "CATALYTIC FORCES" 

therefore have been operative so-called catalytic * forces, 
hitherto concealed from us, which were able to release and 
convert into active force a small part of the potential energy- 
laid up in all bodies. That fifty years ago a physicist could 
venture with impunity publicly to declare the possible exist- 
ence of ' forces up to the present unknown to us,' without 
on that account having dirt thrown upon him by anonymous 
writers in (so-called) 'respectable journals,' is proved by the 
following words of the then professor of physics in the Uni- 
versity of Heidelberg in the year 1829:^ * Not a few, and 
among them, moreover, advantageously known scholars, have 
supposed different tmknown forces in nature, and especially 
in man. That there may be such, from whose action many 
as yet mysterious phenomena of vegetable and animal vital 



1 "That the ordinary chemical and physical processes require for their ex- 
planation the supposition of such catalytic forces was first recognized by Ber- 
zelius, with whom, as is well known, the designation of these forces originated. 

"It is certainly a proof of the great acuteness of Wilhelm Weber, and of the 
universal significance of his /aw, that already, thirty-two years ago, immediately 
following the discussion of the analytical expression of his law (compare my 
"Principles of an Electro-Dynamic Theory of Matter," vol. i.), he expressed him- 
self concerning the existence of catalytic forces in nature as follows : 

"'Thus this force depends on the quantity of the masses, on their distance, on 
their relative velocity, and further on that relative acceleration, which comes to 
them partly in consequence of the persistence of the motion already present in 
them, partly in consequence of the forces acting upon them from other bodies. 

" ' It seems to follow from thence that direct interaction between two electrical 
masses depends not exclusively upon these masses themselves and their mutual 
relations, but also in the presence of third bodies. Now it is known that Berze- 
lius has already conjectured such a dependence of direct interaction of two bodies 
in the presence of a third, and has designated the force thence resulting by the 
name of catalytic. Adopting this name, it can therefore be said that even elec 
trical phenomena proceed in part from catalytic forces. 

" 'This proof of catalytic forces for electricity is not, however, strictly speak- 
ing, a consequence of the discovered principles of electricity. It would only then be 
so, if with these principles was necessarily connected the idea that only the forces 
by which electrical masses act directly on each other from a distance were thereby 
determined. It is, however, conceivable that among the forces comprehended under 
the discovered principles are some exercised t7iediatelyhy electrical masses on one 
another, which must therefore depend, in the first instance, on the interposing 
medium, and furthermore on all bodies acting on this medium. Such mediately 
exercised forces, if the interposing medium is withdrawn from our view, may 
easily pass for catalytic forces, altho in fact not so. The conception of catalytic 
forces must at least be essentially modified in speaking of them in such cases. 
That is to say, under catalytic force must then be understood such a mediately 
exercised force as can be defined according to a general rule through a certain 
knowledge of the bodies to whose influence the interposing medium is subjected, 
altho without knowledge of this medium itself. The discovered fundamental law 
of electricity gives a general rule for the determination of catalytic forces in this 
sense.' " 

^Muncke, in Gehler's "Dictionary of Physics," vol. v., p. 1007. 



REFUSING GALILEO'S TELESCOPE 2S5 

processes could be explicable, certainly can not be denied 
generally and a priori ; but, on the other hand, it is quite 
certain that the greatest circumspection and a skepticism 
much to be recommended to a physicist should be exercised 
in this supposition.' 

" How far the paternal counsel here given to uncritical 
physicists is justifiable and decent when applied to men of 
the scientific eminence of Wilhelm Weber or Fechner, par- 
ticularly from the mouths of literati 2C!\^ pretended {so-genann- 
ten) ' men of science,' posterity may judge. In the mean 
while we console ourselves with words addressed by Galileo 
to Kepler : 

" ' What wilt thou say of the first teachers at the Gym- 
nasium at Padua who, when I offered it to them, would look 
neither at the planets nor the moon through the telescope? 
This sort of men look on philosophy as a book like the ^neid 
or Odyssey, and believe that truth is to be sought not in the 
world or nature but only in " comparison of texts. " How 
wouldst thou have laughed, when at Pisa the first teacher 
of the Gymnasium there endeavored, in the presence of the 
Grand Duke, to tear away the new planets from heaven with 
logical arguments, like magical exorcisms ! ' 

** Kepler, however, hereupon answered Galileo : 

" ' Courage, Galileo, and advance ! If I see rightly, few 
of Europe's eminent mathematicians will fall away from us; 
so great is the power of truth. ' " 

Now test these phenomena by the two hypotheses usually 
given to explain away Zollner's experiments with Slade, that 
Slade hypnotized Zollner, making him see what he pleased, 
and the other, that Zollner was troubled with incipient in- 
sanity. To the latter charge the head of the university says 
" No," with warmth. The talk of those scientists who think 
belief in Spiritiialism is sufficient proof of incipient insanity 
counts but little. This charge of insanity has been urged 
against the utterance of almost every great man who has 
taught something new. The leaders in Palestine thought 
Christ insane, and yet His mind was the sanest that ever 
tabernacled in flesh ; '* great learning " had made Paul mad ; 
Savonarola, Luther, Garrison were all thought by the world's 



356 HYPNOTISM WON'T EXPLAIN 

leaders in their day unsound in mind; Hare, de Morgan, 
Wallace, Crookes, all had gone daft when they reported that 
"there is something in Spiritual phenomena." 

How will the explanation of hypnotism or sleight-of-hand 
explain the physical fact that this piece of wood was broken 
before these professors in a way that required the strength 
of two horses to do it ? The broken pieces of wood were there 
afterward, and were scientifically examined by scientific men 
who were among the greatest physicists of the age. The jag- 
ged ends showed the direction in which the force was exerted. 

On the theory of hypnotism, several professors would 
have had to have been hypnotized at the same time and not 
have known it — possible, but not likely ; yet the fact remained 
afterward that the pole was broken by a pull that required 
the strength of two horses. 

As soon as Professor Zollner had made known what oc- 
curred in' his presence, a storm of ridicule and criticism burst 
upon him as had burst upon Wallace and Crookes. Then it 
was discovered, but not before, that he was afflicted with 
incipient insanity. Zollner urged the following considera- 
tion upon his scientific colleagues : 

" The establishment of physical facts fails within the do- 
main of the physicist ; and if men of such distinguished emi- 
nence as Wilhelm Weber, Fechner, and others, after thorough 
experimental investigation, publicly attest the reality of such 
facts, it is evidently nothing but an act of modern presump- 
tion for unscientific people, at their pleasure, to accept as 
facts absurd conjectures concerning the possibility of trick- 
ery without more inquiry, and thus to deny the capacity of 
these men for exact observations. 

" I have already described in detail the conditions under 
which the knots occurred in the string fastened by a seal, in 
the presence of Mr. Slade, without the string being touched. 
Every possibility that these knots were in the string already, 
before the sealing of the ends, and had only been brought to 
another part of the same by pushing, is definitely excluded." 

" As regards the following experiments with Mr. Slade, 



UNFAIR SCIENTISTS 357 

I describe them in the first place for physicists, that is, for 
scientific men who are competent to understand my other 
physical investigations and experiments, to which, during 
the space of twenty years, I have given publicity in scientific 
journals. Such men alone are able to form an independent 
judgment, on the ground of my antecedent work, as to how 
far confidence should be extended to me as a physical ex- 
perimentalist. For tho the theoretical considerations — by 
which the facts of observation so imparted by me during that 
space have been connected hitherto — deviate in many re- 
spects from ray own, the facts themselves so observed by me 
have up to this time received only confirmation in their en- 
tirety. As regards such men, also, who on the ground of my 
labors heretofore are able to form their own independent 
judgment on my reliability and credibility, I am relieved 
from the useless trouble of describing more minutely and 
circumstantially than is necessary for intellectual and scien- 
tific men the conditions under which the following phenomena 
were observed by me. Suppose, for example, I observed 
during a physical investigation (as in that concerning the 
electric fluid) deviations of the magnetic needle under hith- 
erto unusual conditions. If now a physicist, wishing to 
bring my observations into contempt, were to suggest that I 
had perhaps accidentally had a magnetic knife on the table, 
or had not duly taken into account the daily variations of the 
earth's magnetism, such suppositions might be entertained 
with respect to a student or beginner in the province of phys- 
ical observations, but I myself should feel them, coming 
from a scientific colleague, as an insult, and should hold it 
beneath my dignity as a physicist to reply to them.' 

" I assume entirely the same position in describing the 
following experiments with Mr. Slade, which I conducted 
partly alone, partly in company with my above-named friend, 
Oscar von Hoffmann, as in describing the greater number of 
my former physical investigations." 

1 "The above protest recalls that of Mr. Crookes, in referring to a suggestion 
that, in his researches with Mr. Home, he had posaibl}' allowed the latter to sup- 
ply a board forming an essential part of the apparatus employed. 

"It is seriously expected," says Mr. Crookes, "that I should answer such a 
question as 'did Mr. Home furnish the board?' Will not my critics give me 
credit for the possession of some amount of common sense? And can they not 
imagine that obvious precautions, which occur to them as soon as they sit down to 
pick holes in my experiments, are not unlikely to have also occurred to me in the 
course of prolonged and patient investigation ? " — Tr. 



358 NO A PRIORI CONDITIONS 

Zollner calls attention to the fact that it would have been 
preposterous, " on entering a new and wholly unfamiliar 
province of physical phenomena, to impose a /jnori conditions 
under which these phenomena ' ought ' to occur." He con- 
tinues : 

"The experiments formerly described (December 17, 
1878) with the knotted cord suggest two explanations, ac- 
cording as one supposes a space of three or of four dimen- 
sions. In the first case there must have been a so-called 
passage of matter through matter; or, in other words, the 
molecules of which the cord consists must have been sepa- 
rated in certain places, and then, after the other portion of 
cord had been passed through, again united in the same posi- 
tion as at first. In the second case the manipulation of the 
flexible cord being, according to my theory, subject to the 
laws of a four-dimensional region of space, such a separation 
and reunion of molecules would not be necessary. The cord 
would, however, certainly undergo during the process an 
amount of twisting which would be discernible after the 
knots were tied. I had not paid attention to this circum- 
stance in December last year, and had not examined the cords 
with regard to the size and direction of the twist. The fol- 
lowing experiment, however, which took place on the 8th of 
May this year, in a sitting of a quarter of an hour's duration 
with Mr. Slade in a well-lighted room,' furnishes an answer 
to the above question in favor of the four-dimensional theory 
without separation of material particles. 

"The experiment was as follows : I took two bands cut 
out of soft leather, 44 centimeters long and from 5 to 10 
millimeters broad, and fastened the ends of each together, 
as formerly described with the cords, and sealed them with 
my own seal. The two leather bands were laid separately 
on the card-table at which we sat ; the seals were placed 
opposite to one another, and I held my hands over the bands. 
Slade sat at my left side, and placed his right hand gently 
over mine, I being able to feel the leather underneath all the 
time. Slade asserted that he saw lights emanating from 
my hands, and could feel a cool wind over them. I felt the 

1 Let it be remembered that all of the experiments with Slade were made 
either in Zollner's own house or the house of his personal friend, Mr von 
Hoffmann 



KNOTS IN ENDLESS BANDS ^59 

latter, but could not see the lights. Presently, while I still 
distinctly felt the cool breeze, and Slade's hands were not 
touching mine, but were removed from them about two or 
three decimeters, I felt a movement of the leather bands 
under my hands. Then came three raps in the table, and 
on removing my hands the two leather bands were knotted 
together. The time that the bands were under my hands 
was at most three minutes. " 

'Zollner, to test further the power of these unseen intelli- 
gences who seemed to be working with Slade, secured two 
wooden rings, one of oak and the other of alder-wood, each 
turned from one piece. Zollner reasoned : 

" Could these two rings be interlinked without solution 
of continuity, the test would be additionally convincing by 
close microscopic examination of the unbroken continuity of 
the fiber. Two different kinds of wood being chosen, the 
possibility of cutting both rings from the same piece is like- 
wise excluded. Two such interlinked rings would conse- 
quently in themselves represent a ' miracle,' that is, a phe- 
nomenon which our conceptions heretofore of physical and 
organic processes would be absolutely incompetent to ex- 
plain." 

Zollner also had cut from a dried gut, such as is used in 
twine factories, a band without ends, holding that if a knot 
be tied in this band, close microscopic examination would also 
reveal whether the connection of the parts of this strip had 
been severed or not. He says : 

" On the 9th day of May, at seven o'clock in the 
evening, I was alone with Slade in our usual sitting-room. 
A fresh wind having blown all the afternoon, the sky was 
remarkably clear, and the room, which has a westerly aspect, 
was brilliantly lighted by the setting sun. The two wooden 
rings and the above-mentioned entire bladder band were 
strung on to a piece of catgut one millimeter in thickness 
and 1.05 meters in length. The two ends of the catgut were 
tied together by myself in a knot, and then, as formerly in 
the case of the string, secured with my own seal by myself. 



36o ASTONISHING RESULTS 

" When Slade and I were seated at the table in the usual 
manner, I placed my two hands over the upper end of the 
sealed catgut. The small round table, already referred to, 
was placed shortly after our entry into the room a short dis- 
tance from where we were sitting. 

" After a few minutes had elapsed, and Slade bad asserted, 
as usual during physical manifestations, that he saw lights, 
a slight smell of burning was apparent in the room; it seemed 
to come from under the table, and somewhat recalled the 
smell of sulfuric acid. Shortly afterward we heard a rattling 
sound at the small round table opposite, as of pieces of wood 
knocking together. When I asked whether we should close 
the sitting, the rattling was repeated three times consecu- 
tively. We then left our seats, in order that we might ascer- 
tain the cause of the rattling at the round table. To our 
great astonishment we found the two wooden rings, which 
about six minutes previously were strung on the catgut, in 
complete preservation, encircling the leg of the small table. 
The catgut was tied in two loose knots, through which the 
endless bladder band was hanging iminjitred. 

" Immediately after the sitting, astonished and highly de- 
lighted at such a wealth of permanent results, I called my 
friend and his wife into the sitting-room. Slade fell into 
one of his usual trances, and informed us that the invisible 
beings surrounding him had endeavored, according to my 
wish, to tie some knots in the endless band, but had been 
obliged to abandon their intention as the band was in danger 
of ' melting ' during the operation under the great increase of 
temperature, and that we should perceive this by the white- 
ness of a spot on the band. Having taken the band into my 
own hands immediately after the sitting, and held it up to 
the moment of Slade's communication, I felt great interest 
in testing the correctness of this assertion. There was, in 
fact, a white spot as indicated, and when we took another 
piece of exactly the same material and held it over a lighted 
candle, the effect of the increased temperature was to produce 
precisely such another white spot. This fact, in connection 
with the burning smell perceived during the sitting, as well 
as the increase in temperature in a former experiment (re- 
lated above), will be worth bearing in mind in further experi- 
ments with four-dimensional movements of bodies, 

"From the foregoing it will be seen XhaXvay prepared 



CONTEMPTUOUS ABUSE 361 

experiments did not succeed in the manner expected by me. 
For example, the two wooden rings were not linked together, 
but instead were transferred within five minutes from the 
sealed catgut to the leg of the round birchen table. Since 
the seal was not loosened, and the top of the table was not at 
any time removed — it is still tightly fastened — it follows, 
from the standpoint of our present conception of space, that 
each of the two wooden rings penetrated first the catgut and 
then the birch-wood of the leg of the table. If, however, I 
ask whether, in the eyes of a skeptic, the experiment desired 
by me or that which actually succeeded is most fitted to make 
a great and convincing impression, on closer consideration 
every one will decide in favor of the latter. For the demon- 
strative force of the interlinked rings would rest merely on 
the credibility of the botanically educated microscopist, who 
must have been my witness (as the imperial court conjurer, 
Bellachini, was for Mr. Slade) that the natural conformation 
of the rings had never been disturbed. How wholly useless, 
however, such testimonies are at present, when, according to 
Goethe's expression, ' incredulity has become like an inverted 
superstition for the delusion of our time,' we have seen in 
the sort of criticism which Bellachini's testimony has under- 
gone at the hands of the Berlin literati.^ The question will 
moreover be asked. Why just here in Leipsic the experiments 
with Mr. Slade have been crowned with such splendid suc- 
cess, and yet the knot experiment, for example, has not once 
succeeded ni Russia, notwithstanding so many wishes .'' If it 
is considered how great an interest Mr. Slade must have in 
seeing so simple and striking an experiment everywhere and 
always successful, every rightly judging and unprejudiced 
person must see just in this very circumstance the most 
striking proof that Mr. Slade is no trickster who by clever 
manipulations makes these knots himself. For such a one 
would evidently be at the trouble so to increase his expert- 
ness, by frequent repetition of the experiment, as to be able 
to rely with certainty on his art to deceive other ' men of 
science. ' That, nevertheless, this obvious consideration has 
not suggested itself, the above-mentioned failure being re- 
garded, on the contrary, as just the proof that Mr. Slade has 
only deceived us at Leipsic, which he could not do with the 

1 Mere contemptuous abuse— Professor Zollner gives the articles at length in 
an earlier part of his volume, — Tr. 



362 INEXPLICABLE BY KNOWN LAW 

higher intelligence of the Russian learned, is shown by the 
following words of a scientific friend from Russia, to whom 
I had sent my ' Scientific Treatises. ' " 

The passing of the rings as described by Zollner from 
the sealed catgut on to the legs of the table is inexplicable 
by any known law of nature. Yet, with all deference to 
Zollner, had the two wooden rings been linked together, 
the experiment would have been more satisfactory, forever a 
scientific demonstration of matter passing through matter. 
Zollner planned well, but for some reason the " intelligences " 
did not carry out his plan. It is easy to believe that if supra- 
mundane intelligences are manifesting themselves on earth, 
they are subject to limitations of which we know nothing. 
We are not in a position to say what "ought" to take place. 
We should be content to ask what can take place. After 
Slade's return to America I had many sittings with him and 
tried hard- to perfect this experiment of Zollner's with turned 
wooden rings, but did not succeed. 

The Disappearance and Reappearance of a Table 

The following marvel, Zollner tells us, took place at 
about midday in " bright sunshine " : 

" I had, as usual, taken my place with Slade at the card- 
table. Opposite to me stood, as was often the case in other 
experiments, a small round table near the card-table. The 
height of the round table is Jj centimeters, diameter of the 
surface 46 centimeters, the material birchen wood, and the 
weight of the whole table 4.5 kilograms. About a minute 
might have passed after Slade and I had sat down and laid 
our hands joined together on the table when the round table 
was set in slow oscillations, which we could both clearly 
perceive in the top of the round table rising above the card- 
table, while its lower part was concealed from view by the 
top of the card-table. 

" The motions very soon became greater, and the whole 
table approaching the card-table laid itself under the latter, 



A TABLE DISAPPEARS 2^2 

with its three feet turned toward me. Neither I nor, as it 
seemed, Mr. Slade, knew how the phenomenon would further 
develop/ since during the space of a minute which now 
elapsed nothing whatever occurred. Slade was about to take 
slate and pencil to ask his ' spirits ' whether we had anything 
still to expect, when I wished to take a nearer view of the 
position of the round table lying, as I supposed, under the 
card-table. To my and Slade's great astonishment we found 
the space beneath the card-table completely empty, nor were 
we able to find in all the rest of the room that table which 
only a minute before was present to our senses. In the ex- 
pectation of its reappearance we sat again at the card-table, 
Slade close to me, at the same angle of the table opposite 
that near which the round table had stood before. We might 
have sat about five or six minutes, in intense expectation of 
what should come, when suddenly Slade again asserted that 
he saw lights in the air. Altho I, as usual, could perceive 
nothing whatever of the kind, I yet followed involuntarily 
with my gaze the directions to which Slade turned his head, 
during all which time our hands remained constantly on the 
table, linked together (iiber-einander liegend); under the 
table, my left leg was almost continually touching Slade's 
right in its whole extent, which was quite without design, 
and owing to our proximity at the same corner of the table. 
Looking up in the air eagerly and astonished, in different 
directions, Slade asked me if I did not perceive the great 
lights. I answered decidedly in the negative; but as I 
turned my head, following Slade's gaze up to the ceiling of 
the room behind my back, I suddenly observed, at a height of 
about five feet, the hitherto invisible table with its legs 
turned upward very quickly floating down in the air upon the 
top of the card-table. Altho we involuntarily drew back our 
heads sideways, Slade to the left and I to the right, to avoid 
injury from the falling table, yet we were both, before the 
round table had laid itself down on the top of the card-table, 
so violently struck on the side of the head, that I felt the 
pain on the left of mine fully four hours after this occurrence, 
which took place at about half-past eleven." 

1 "The movement of heavy objects without any possible contact by Slade was 
so common that we looked on the movement of the table as only the beginniag of 
a further succession of phenomena." 



364 WALLACE'S HOME EXPERIMENTS 

Alfred Russel Wallace's Experiments in His Own 
Home with a Friend who did not think Herself 
A Medium 

The famous scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, by various 
experiments sought to produce psychic phenomena in his 
own home and with those who were not known as mediums. 
He describes some of these experiments as follows : ' 

" I now for some months left off going to Mrs. Marshall's 
[a medium with whom, experiments had been carried on], and 
endeavored to produce the phenomena at home. My friend, 
Mr. R., soon found he had the power to produce slight move- 
ments of the table, but they were never of such a nature as to 
satisfy an observer that they were not produced consciously 
or unconsciously by our own muscles. The style and char- 
acter of the communications obtained through these move- 
ments were, however, such as to satisfy us that our own 
minds had no part in producing them. 

" We tried among all our friends to find one who had 
power to produce distinct taps, a class of phenomena that ap- 
peared to us much more satisfactory, because we could not 
produce them ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously, 
under the same conditions. It was in November, 1866, that 
my sister discovered that a lady living with her had the power 
of inducing loud and distinct taps and other curious phenom- 
ena, and I now began a series of observations in my own 
house, the most important of which I shall briefly narrate. 

" When we sat at a large loo-table without a cloth, with 
all our hands upon it, the taps would generally commence 
in a few minutes. They sounded as if made on the under 
side of the leaf of the table, in various parts of it. They 
changed in tone and loudness, from a sound like that pro- 
duced by tapping with a needle or a long finger-nail, to others 
like blows with a fist or slaps with the fingers of a hand. 
Sounds were produced also like scraping with a finger-nail, 
or like the rubbing of a damp finger pressed very hard on the 
table. The rapidity with which these sounds are produced 
and are changed is very remarkable. They will imitate, more 
or less exactly, sounds which we make with our fingers above 

1 "Miracles and Modem Spiritualism," pp. 139-44. 



INADEQUATE EXPLANATIONS 2^S 

the table ; they will keep good time to a tune whistled by one 
of the party ; they will sometimes, at request, play a very 
fair tune themselves, or will follov/ accurately a hand tapping 
a tune upon the table. When these sounds are heard repeat- 
edly in one's own well-lighted room, upon one's own table, 
and with every hand in the room visible, the ordinary ex- 
planations given of them seem utterly untenable. Of course 
the first impression on hearing a few taps only is that some 
one is making them with the feet. To set this doubt at rest, 
we have on several occasions all knelt down round the table, 
and yet the taps have continued, and have not only been 
heard as if on the leaf of the table, but have been felt vibra- 
ting through it. Another view is that the sounds are pro- 
duced by the slipping of tendons or the cracking of joints in 
some parts of the medium's body; and this explanation is, I 
believe, the one most commonly accepted by scientific men. 
But surely, if this be so, some one case can be brought for- 
ward in which a person's bones or tendons can make sounds 
like tapping, rapping, thumping, slapping, scratching, and 
rubbing, and can repeat some of these so rapidly as to follow 
every tap of an observer's fingers or to keep time to music; 
and further, that all these sounds shall appear to every one 
present not to come from the individual's body, but from the 
table at which he is sitting, and which shall often vibrate 
when the sounds are heard. Until such a case is produced 
I must be excused for marveling at the credulity of those who 
accept so absurd and inadequate an explanation. 

" A still more remarkable phenomenon, and one which I 
have observed with the greatest care and the most profound 
interest, is the exhibition of considerable force under condi- 
tions which preclude the muscular action of any of the party. 
We stood round a small work-table, whose leaf was about 
twenty inches across, placing our hands all close together 
near the center. After a short time the table would rock 
about from side to side, and then, appearing to steady itself, 
would rise vertically from six inches to a foot, and remain 
suspended often fifteen or twenty seconds. During this time 
any one or two of the party could strike it or press on it, as 
it resisted a very considerable force. Of course, the first 
impression is that some one's foot is lifting up the table. 
To answer this objection, I prepared the table before our 
second trial without telling any one, by stretching some thin 



266 ISOLATING THE TABLE 

tissue paper between the feet an inch or two from the bottom 
of the pillar, in such a manner that any attempt to insert the 
foot must crush and tear the paper. The table rose up as 
before, resisted pressure downward, as if it were resting on 
the back of some animal, sunk to the floor, and in a short 
time rose again, and then dropped suddenly down. I now 
with some anxiety turned up the table, and, to the surprise 
of all present, showed them the delicate tissue stretched 
across altogether uninjured! Finding that this kind of test 
was troublesome, as the paper or threads had to be renewed 
every time, and were liable to be broken accidentally before 
the experiment began, I constructed a cylinder of hoops and 
laths, covered with canvas. The table was placed within this 
as in a well, and, as it was about eighteen inches high, it 
effectually kept feet and ladies' dresses from the table. This 
apparatus in no way checked the table's upward motion, and 
as the hands of the medium were always close under the 
eyes of all present, and simply resting on the top of the table, 
it would appear that there was some new and unknown power 
here at work. These experiments have been many times 
repeated by me, and I am satisfied of the correctness of my 
statement of the facts. 

" On two or three occasions only, when the conditions 
appear to have been unusually favorable, I have witnessed a 
still more marvelous phenomenon. While sitting at the large 
table in our usual manner, I placed the small table about four 
feet from it, on the side next the medium and my sister. 
After some time, while we were talking, we heard a slight 
sound from the table, and looking toward it found that it 
moved slightly at short intervals, and after a little time it 
moved suddenly up to the table by the side of the medium, as 
if it had gradually got within the sphere of a strong attrac- 
tive force. Afterward, at our request, it was thrown down 
on the floor without any person touching it, and it then 
moved about in a strange, life-like manner, as if seeking some 
means of getting up again, turning its claws first on one side 
and then on the other. On another occasion a very large 
leather armchair, which stood at least four or five feet from 
the medium, suddenly wheeled up to her after a few slight 
preliminary movements. It is, of course, easy to say that 
what I relate is impossible. I maintain that it is accurately 
true; and that no man, whatever be his attainments, has such 



"IMPOSSIBLE," YET TRUE 367 

an exhaustive knowledge of the powers of nature as to justify 
him in using the word impossible with regard to facts which 
I and many others have repeatedly witnessed. 

"On Wednesday evening, February 27, 1867, some very 
remarkable phenomena occurred. The parties present were 
my sister and Miss Nichol (now Mrs. Volckman), her father, 
Mr, H. T. Humphreys, and two young friends of mine, Mr. 
and Miss M. My wife and her sister also sat in the room at 
some distance from the table looking on. There was no fire, 
and we lowered the gas so as to give a subdued light, which 
enabled everything to be seen. The moment we were all 
in our places taps were heard, indicating that the conditions 
were favorable. We now sent for a single wineglass, which 
was placed on the floor between Miss Nichol and her father, 
and we requested it might be struck. After a short time it 
was gently tapped, producing a clear ringing sound. This 
soon changed to a sound as if two glasses were gently struck 
together ; and now we were all astonished by hearing in suc- 
cession almost every possible sound that could be produced 
by two glasses one inside the other, even to the clang of one 
dropped into another. They were in every respect identical 
with such sounds as we could produce with two glasses, and 
with two only, manipulated in a variety of ways, and yet I 
was quite sure that only one wineglass was in the room, 
and every person's hands were distinctly visible on the 
table. 

" We now took up the glass again and put it on the table, 
where it was held by both Miss N. and Mr. Humphreys, so 
as to prevent any vibration it might produce. After a short 
interval of silence an exquisitely delicate sound as of tap- 
ping a glass was heard, which increased to clear silvery notes 
like the tinkling of a glass bell. These continued in vary- 
ing degrees for some minutes, and then became fainter and 
gradually died away. We afterward placed a rude bamboo 
harp from the Malay archipelago under the table, and, after 
several alterations of position, the strings were twanged as 
clearly and loudly as any of us could do it with our fingers. 
Having had such success with the glass, we asked if the harp 
could also be imitated, and having received permission to try, 
placed it also on the table. After a little time faint vibra- 
ting taps were heard, and these soon changed into very faint 
twangs which formed a distinct imitation of the harp strings, 



368 DR. SAVAGE'S TESTIMONY 

altho by no means so successfully as in the case of the wine- 
glass. 

" We were informed by taps in the ordinary way that it 
was through the peculiar influence of Mr, Nichol that this 
extraordinary production of imitative musical sounds without 
any material object was effected. I may add that the imita- 
tion of the sound produced by two glasses was so perfect 
that some of the party turned up the table immediately after 
we left it, under the impression that the unseen power had 
brought in a second glass, but none could be found." 



Rev, Minot J. Savage, D.D., Sees Chairs Moved 
About in Extraordinary Ways — Rev. O. B. Froth- 
ingham's Strange Experience 

In his book, " Can Telepathy Explain.'* " Dr. Savage gives 
ail account of a number of physical manifestations which he 
or friends of his witnessed : 

" I have seen tables and chairs lifted in a way not to be 
explained by any ordinary methods, and this a good many 
times. On one occasion, when seated in a heavy armchair, 
I was myself gently and quietly lifted into the air while a 
skeptical friend looked on and carefully studied what was 
taking place. The only possible connection with any human 
agency was in the fact that the psychic laid his hand on the 
back of the chair and raised it as the chair itself was lifted. 
It would have been beyond the limits of the strength of the 
psychic to have done this, even tho he had stooped and 
grasped the chair with both his hands. How it was accom- 
plished I do not undertake to say. I simply note the fact as 
a contribution to this discussion. It certainly is something 
that needs to be explained. The late Rev. O. B. Frothingham 
was widely known as an exponent of the most liberal theo- 
logical ideas. He was a keen thinker and brilliant speaker. 
His prejudices were strong against what is known as ' Spiri- 
tualism.' During the later years of his life he had little 
hope of personal immortality. I speak of these things only 
to show that his prejudices were not in favor of the reality 
of any occult phenomena ; and yet he told me one day of an 
experience which was a most remarkable illustration of the 



SEVEN MEN LIFTED 369 

exercise of some power which needs to be explained. It 
occurred in the city of New York. He said that he and six 
other men sat upon the top of a large square piano, while it 
was lifted into the air. The only visible cause lay in the 
fact that a delicate woman touched the top of the piano with 
her fingers. I should be very skeptical of stories like this, 
even from so clear-headed an observer as Mr. Frothingham, 
did I not know that similar things had taken place on other 
occasions," 

Slate- Writing 

Slate-writing has given us a class of physical phenomena 
which is under special suspicion because of the great amount 
of fraud perpetrated through it and of which much has been 
made by professional conjurers. The tricks are many that 
can be played with slates — such as the substitution by sleight- 
of-hand of slates already written upon for those examined, 
the writing with invisible ink which becomes visible by wet- 
ting with a sponge or spittle, false bottoms, etc. 

I had my brother, B. F. Funk, visit a medium in a distant 
city to secure slate- writing under severe test conditions. As 
I have said elsewhere, my brother is not a novice in these 
investigations and can not be easily fooled. He is not a 
Spiritualist, but is a candid investigator. The following is 
his report of this experiment — the Mr. D. spoken of is a 
business man of good reputation. 

" Mr. D. and I called at the home of Mrs. R., the medium. 
Before going I purchased two slates at a department- store, 
took them to my room in the hotel where I was stopping, 
washed them thoroughly, and tied them together firmly with 
a cotton twine and then with a hemp twine, melted sealing 
wax on the knots until the cords were cemented together and 
to the slates. Both slates were thus fastened where the 
cords crossed. I then pressed a Yale lock key on the wax, 
giving a good imprint ; the number of the key was legible. 
Before fastening the slates I placed a small piece of slate 
pencil between them. These slates we took with us. 

" We were admitted to the back parlor. I asked Mrs. 
24 



370 MY BROTHER'S EXPERIENCE 

R. for a writing. She said she would see what we could get. 
I wrote a note to a deceased brother, asking for a communi- 
cation, and sealed it and laid it on the slates. The medium 
did not know what I had written. She held the slates on her 
lap for a while, but not out of my sight; then held them 
under an open stand so that I could see the edges of the 
slates. She then took them from under the stand and laid 
them on a music-box, which was on the stand. Her husband, 
who had been absent, came in about this time. He did not 
come near the table at any time. We four sat talking some 
time, then Mrs. R. threw a small shoulder shawl over the 
slates and sat down. I watched her every moment carefully. 
Presently she went out of the room. I was sitting within 
three feet of the music-box, knowing the slates were under 
the shawl. After not more than two minutes Mrs. R. re- 
turned and sat down five or six feet from the music-box, not 
touching it, and we all were talking when she suddenly said : 
' The control says, " We have done the best we can and we 
hope it will be satisfactory. " ' I got up and removed the 
shawl, took up the slates, examined them carefully, Mr. D. 
examined them, and both of us are positive that the knots or 
cords had in no way been disturbed. They were exactly as 
I had tied them at the hotel. The seals were intact. I then 
cut the strings at the edge of the slates, and there were two 
messages written on one slate on the inside, one from my 
brother and one from H. W. Beecher, and ' Nellie Gray ' was 
also printed on one. She is one of the controls. The wri- 
ting was backward, from right to left, so that we had to hold 
it before a mirror to read it. This was the most convincing 
and satisfactory proof of psychic phenomena I had ever re- 
ceived. " 

The one suspicious feature about this test is that the me- 
dium went out of the room. It is not likely that there was 
any substitution of slates. The writing was an answer to the 
letter written and closed after the slates had been sealed. 
For the medium to have written what was on the slates she 
would had to have taken them out of the room, and, after 
prying the slates slightly apart and inserting a bit of wire 
with a piece of slate pencil attached, to have done the writing. 
She would also have had to open the sealed envelope in or- 



ZOLLNER TRIES SEALED SLATES 371 

der to respond to the question, unless she is gifted with 
clairvoyant power. 

My brother insists that this explanation is not a possible 
one, as the slates were placed under the shawl, and that the 
woman did not touch the shawl after she returned, and that 
when he lifted the shawl the slates were there. 

The husband, after he entered the room, touched neither 
the shawl nor the slates. 

Professor Zollner made many experiments with slate- 
writing. The following is a remarkable variation from the 
ordinary slate-writing. The professor purchased a large 
double slate fastened with hinges. This double slate he 
took to the house of his university colleague. Professor 
Wach, They there agreed upon an experimentation. They 
placed a small bit of pencil between the two slates and then 
fastened the slates together " by sticking two strips of paper, 
35 millimeters broad, with liquid glue over the shorter frame 
(184 millimeters long). Over the edges of the strips of pa- 
per so glued Professor Wach also placed two seals, on each 
side, impressed with his own signet. The strips of paper 
were intentionally inscribed on the inner side to facilitate 
discovery in the event of an artificial reunion after tearing. 
"My suggestion," says Zollner, "to place two seals on the 
front side for greater security my colleague rejected as super- 
fluous, since he was firmly convinced that the securing with 
four seals completely sufficed already for the discovery of 
any interference or trick. " 

Thus sealed these slates were left in a closet during the 
day in the house of von Hoffmann, where Slade was stopping. 
It was thought certain that the slates were so fastened and 
sealed that any tampering with the slates would be easily 
discovered. On the evening of this same day the sitting 
took place and what followed is thus described by Zollner : 

" After some words of greeting I took the slates from the 
closet near the table and explained to Mr. Slade, who now 



372 CAREFUL TESTS 

apparently saw the slate for the first time, the object I had 
in view in regard to it. We both, one after the other, satis- 
fied ourselves, by shaking, that the small piece of pencil was 
between the surfaces of the two slates. I now laid this slate 
on that side of the card-table (to Blade's left) where were the 
other slates and different objects, with which it remained ly- 
ing from now continuously under my eyes. Immediately after 
laying down the slate I sat with Slade at the card-table, on 
which a brightly burning candle stood. Slade hereupon took 
up again in his hands the slate referred to, I narrowly and 
continually watching it, and asked me whether I would not 
like to afifix two seals to both sides of the above-described 
cylindrical brass spirals, and to impress them with my own 
signet. Having the latter in my pocket, and a stick of seal- 
ing-wax lying on the table among other writing utensils, I 
at once, on the above words of Slade, took the slate with my 
left hand, drew the signet from my right trouser pocket, laid 
it on the table, then took the sealing-wax, holding the slate 
all the time with my left hand, with the wooden edges which 
had to be sealed turned upward. Thereupon, holding these 
edges firmly pressed together with my left hand, I placed on 
the above- indicated places two large seals, on which I pressed 
my signet. When the wax had become cold, the two wooden 
edges of the closed slates were thus so tightly connected that 
it was impossible to push a sheet of paper through those parts 
which were not stuck with paper and seals. Thereupon I 
laid the slate so fastened upon the table, and indeed at a 
place at least a foot and a half removed from Slade's hands, 
which lay under mine, and were thereby controlled. I now 
joined in conversation with Slade, and asked him, among 
other things, whether he had not yet tried, instead of slate- 
writing, to obtain writing with lead pencil and paper, since 
this would be an extremely interesting variation of the direct 
writing produced in his presence. Slade replied that he had 
not, but was at once ready to make the attempt. We un- 
linked our hands, and I took from the writing utensils lying 
ready on the table a half sheet of common letter paper (219 
millimeters long 143 millimeters broad, manufacture mark 
Bath), folded it again about the middle, as if it had to be put 
into a large letter-cover 144 millimeters broad and no milli- 
meters deep, and laid between the two halves of this sheet a 
cylindrical piece of graphite of 5 millinrcters length and i 



"LOOK FOR YOUR PAPER" 373 

millimeter thickness, such as is used for lead-pencil holders. 
I was about to lay this piece of paper, so folded with the bit 
of graphite lying in the fold, under the above-described 
sealed slate, when Slade, under control, proposed that I should 
tear off two bits from a corner of the folded paper and keep 
these by me. I at once recognized the importance of this 
precaution, to establish the identity of the piece of paper in 
case it was written on, or disappeared and reappeared after 
some time. Two pieces were therefore, according to Slade's 
suggestion, torn off at the same time from one corner of the 
folded half sheet, and these I forthwith put into the gold 
compartment of my purse. Then the slate was again laid 
on the above-described place on the table, and under it was 
pushed the folded half sheet of letter paper with the stick of 
graphite lying between the folds, so that the slate completely 
covered it. We next laid our hands again upon the table, as 
before, Slade's hands firmly covered by mine, and thus pre- 
vented from moving. 

" We had sat quietly in this position for some time, per- 
haps five minutes, but nothing worth notice occurred. Slade 
often shuddered as by spasms passing through him, but all 
remained quiet, so that we became impatient, and Slade re- 
sorted to his usual expedient of begging information from 
his spirits, by help of a slate held half under a table. We 
unjoined our hands for this purpose. Slade took the upper- 
most of the slates, which always lay in readiness at his left, 
bit a splinter from a slate pencil, laid it on the slate, and 
held the latter with his left hand half under the table, while 
he placed his right hand again under both of mine. We 
forthwith distinctly heard writing, and very soon afterward 
the three ticks {tick-tacks) which announced that the writing 
was finished. When the slate was drawn out and eagerly 
examined by us, the following words were upon it, ' Look for 
your paper.' I immediately raised the sealed slate to look 
for the folded sheet of letter paper pushed under it, with the 
bit of graphite inside, about five minutes before : both had 
disappeared. I was startled, indeed, at this unexpected phe- 
nomenon, but not particularly astonished, since I had already 
in earlier sittings witnessed the disappearance and reappear- 
ance of objects so abundantly and under such stringent con- 
ditions that this fact in and for itself offered nothing any 
longer new for me. I looked often anxiously to the ceiling 



374 A REMARKABLE SUCCESS 

of the room, in the hope that the paper would fall down, by 
good chance written upon, but it came not, nor did anything 
else remarkable happen. I therefore desired Slade again to 
ask his spirits in the usual manner, which he at once did by 
means of one of the slates lying ready. The noise of wri- 
ting was immediately heard, and on the slate being withdrawn, 
was upon it — 'The paper is between the slates, and it is wi'it- 
ten on it' {sic!). Highly pleased at the ingenious combina- 
tion of physical and intellectual phenomena, I forthwith 
seized the sealed slate, shook it violently, and in fact dis- 
tinctly heard the shifting movement of a paper lying between 
the sides." 

Before the slates were opened Zollner says Slade fell into 
a trance, and with closed eyes and altered tone of voice made 
an address to me in English which, in conclusion, contained 
statements of what we should find (on opening the sealed 
double-slate) written with pencil on the paper lying therein. 
As generally in such cases, Herr O. von Hoffmann wrote 
down, as far as possible, the words spoken by Slade during 
his state of trance. They were as follows : 

" Persevere firmly and courageously, untroubled about thy 
opponents, whose daggers drawn upon thee will turn back 
upon themselves. The scattered seed will find a good soil — 
the minds of good men — altho lower natures are not able 
to value it. In what you have witnessed, others later on will 
discover new beauties which escape you at the time. For 
science it will be an event of unprecedented significance. 
We rejoice that the atmospheric conditions have been favor- 
able to us, for the conditions must be present, and, in part, 
prepared. They can not be explained any more than those, 
for example, which must immediately precede the falling 
asleep. Neither in the one case nor in the other can they 
be compelled. Many enemies of the movement will be its 
friends, as one of the most important. Carpenter, whose an- 
tagonistic disposition has been already, now, through thy 
labors, somewhat shaken, and who later will be thy fellow 
laborer in the same field. As regards the vtanifestation of 
yesterday evening, you will find upon the paper sentences in 
three different languages ; there are some faults in the Ger- 



SCIENTISTS PUZZLED 375 

man and English. At the lower end you will find circles, by 
which we will denote the different dimensions of space. To- 
morrow morning O. von Hoffmann shall again take part in 
the sitting, and to-morrow evening something strange will 
happen." * 

The next day after the disappearance of the note-paper, 
Zollner says : 

" I met my colleagues Wach and Herr O. von Hoffmann 
at the residence of the Councillor Thiersch, in order to open 
the slates fastened with six seals, and which had been up to 
this time continually in my custody. When this was done, 
we found within the piece of paper which had been folded by 
me the evening before, with the stick of graphite, completely 
smooth, without showing any other foldings whatever which 
could denote a forcible insertion through a narrow cleft. This 
would moreover have been altogether impossible without in- 
jury to the seals, since the extent of the edges of the frame 
left free between my seals and the strips of paper employed 
for fastening by Professor Wach — quite apart from their tight 
adhesion to each other — amounted at the maximum to only 
80 millimeters, whereas the narrowest side of the folded sheet 
of letter-paper amounted to 119 millimeters. The often- 
mentioned two brass spirals on the front side of the slate 
clasped one over the other in such a manner that every pos- 
sibility was excluded of shoving in a piece of paper from this 
side. After opening the slate, I took from my purse the 
two bits of paper torn off on the evening before and satisfied 
myself and my friends of their perfect adaptation to the sheet 
of paper found. All little irregularities of the edges fitted 
into each other so exactly that not the slightest doubt could 
prevail that the torn-off bits of paper formed the completion 
of the half sheet of letter-paper. " 

I reproduce here the writing obtained, so far as it is pos- 
sible for me to read it : 

Gottes Vatertreue gelit 
Ueber alle Welt hinaus 
Bete dass sie (P) kehrt 
Ein in unser ar7nes Haus. 

> "On the evening of the 8th May (from 8:zo to 8:35 o'clock) the two endless 
leather strips were knotted fourfold under my hands, held over them." 



376 AN UNFORTUNATE SLIP 

Wir tniissen alle sterben 
Ob arm wir oder reich 
Und vjerden einst erwerben 
Das schbne Himmelreich. 

Now, is the fourth dimension proven ? We are not work- 
ing with slate pencil or on the slate, as our powers are now in 
other directions. 

The strange writing is unknown to me. (Javanese ?) 

Observe : Professor Zollner, relying on the fact that the 
slates were sealed, left them, before the experiment, in a 
closet to which Slade may have had access. This was 
Slade's only chance to have inserted between the slates the 
note-paper with the writing. After the additional seals had 
been placed upon the slates this insertion, under the condi- 
tions mentioned by Zollner, would have been impossible. 
Against the possibility of the insertion by Slade is the fact 
that the note-paper which was found between the slates was 
the identical piece put under the slate by Zollner after the 
sitting had begun. Zollner had ^narked this note-paper in 
an unmistakable way by tearing off two pieces from the 
paper and putting these pieces in his purse. These pieces 
of paper fitted exactly to the note-paper found inside the 
slate. We should also note the fact that for this note-paper 
to have been slipped between the seals, it would have had 
to have been folded. But the note-paper found inside was 
not folded and had no mark on it of having been folded. 
Upon the whole this seems a sound test — one of true evi- 
dential value. But against it we must weigh the fact that 
the Seybert commission of the University of Pennsylvania 
and others claim to have detected Slade substituting slates, 
with writing on them, for the slates watched by the investi- 
gators. In my own tests with Slade I had suspicion of 
tricks attempted by Slade after this same order. 

But the facts still remain that these slates were carefully 
sealed, and the note-paper was marked in a way impossible 
to imitate. 



HUDSON'S SLATE TEST 377 

A Slate Test by Thomson Jay Hudson, the Famous 
Antispiritualist Writer 

Dr. Hudson's "The Law of Psychic Phenomena," and 
his other books against Spiritualism, have had a very exten- 
sive sale in this country and Europe. No man ever waged 
a more effective battle against Spiritualism than did Dr. 
Hudson. However, the Doctor was compelled to admit that 
fraud was an impossibility in the following experiment which 
he and a friend of his made with a slate-writing medium. 
The companion of Dr. Hudson in the experiment was, he 
says, " a celebrated Union general " ; he, as well as Hudson, 
was an unbeliever in Spiritualism ; the general was to be the 
sitter, he agreeing to follow strictly the suggestions of Hud- 
son in making the test. 

The Doctor describes this experiment in great detail.' 
He says : 

" The plan suggested to the general on this occasion, and 
which he carried out to the letter, was as follows : 

" I. To write three letters to as many spirits of his dead 
acquaintances, each one couched in general terms — such as, 
'Dear B., can you communicate with me to-day? If so, tell 
me your condition in the spirit-land.' This could be answered 
by very general remarks, and would require no specific answer 
involving any knowledge of the sitter's affairs or anything 
else. 

" 2. To write two similar letters to two persons known to 
the sitter, but unknown to the medium, to be still living in 
the flesh. 

" 3. To write one letter to a deceased person, asking a 
specific question, the correct answer to which neither the 
sitter nor the medium could possibly know. 

" 4. To place the medium at his ease, by leading him to 
believe that he had to deal with a sympathetic believer in 
the doctrine of Spiritism, who had perfect faith in the medi- 
um's powers. 

"5. To prescribe no test conditions whatever, but let the 
medium have his own way in everything. 

1 Hudson's " The Law of Psychic Phenomena," pp. 276-83. 



378 HUDSON'S SYLLOGISM 

" 6. Under no circumstances to let the medium know the 
name or antecedents of the sitter. 

" These suggestions were carried out to the letter. The 
general was unknown to the medium, and Vv^as introduced by 
the writer under a fictitious name. . . . 

" The conclusions which are inevitable may be summed 
as follows : 

" I. The slate-writing was done without physical contact 
with the pencil, either by the medium or any one else. It 
all occurred in broad daylight. The slates were not handled 
by the medium, except to wash them and to place his hands 
upon them (in all cases but one) while the writing was going 
on. The slates were not for an instant out of sight of the 
sitter during the whole stance, nor were they out of his cus- 
tody during that time, after they were washed by the me- 
dium. They were then carefully inspected by the sitter, the 
pencil was placed between them by the sitter, they were tied 
together by the sitter, and opened by him after the writing 
was finished. In short, there was no chance for fraud or 
legerdemain, and there was none. 

" 2. The power which moved the pencil, being clearly not 
physical, must have been occult. This occult power was either 
that of disembodied spirits or that of the medium. Did it pro- 
ceed from disembodied spirits .'* Let us see. The replies to 
the five letters emanated from the same source ; that is to say, 
if the replies to any of them were from disembodied spirits, 
they were all from disembodied spirits. They were clearly 
not all from disembodied spirits, for two of the letters were 
addressed to living persons, and the replies were of the same 
character as the others. The logical conclusion is inevitable 
that none of the replies was from disembodied spirits. To put 
it in the simple form of a syllogism, we have the following : 

" The replies to the five letters were all from the same 
source. 

" Two of them were not from disembodied spirits. 

" Therefore, none of them were from disembodied spirits. 

" Again : 

"The power to produce the slate- writing emanated either 
from disembodied spirits or from the medium. 

" It did not emanate from disembodied spirits." 

Dr. Hudson's explanation of the phenomenon lies, of 
course, in the subjective mind of the medium. Says he: 



INCONCLUSIVE REASONING 379 

" The power to read the contents of the six letters was 
obviously within the domain of telepathy. He was, there- 
fore, just as well equipped for the performance of that feat as 
a disembodied spirit could be. Suggestion also plays its 
subtle role in this class of phenomena, as in all others, and 
relieves the medium of all imputation of dishonesty or insin- 
cerity in attributing it to the wrong source. The probability 
that the power to move the pencil without physical contact 
resides in the medium is as great, at least, as the probability 
that it resides in disembodied spirits." 

Dr. Hudson's explanation of this writing is interesting 
but not conclusive. There are several possibilities of error 
in his syllogism. Again and again it is claimed by "intelli- 
gences in spirit circles " that sometimes part of a manifesta- 
tion is from spirits and another from the medium ; that some- 
times the writing is done, not by the spirit whose name is 
given, but by a " spirit amanuensis," and that this amanuen- 
sis is sometimes in what is equivalent to what we on earth 
call a trance condition, he writes as he is impressed, more or 
less perfectly. These impressions come from vibrations in 
the thought-ether, and may be produced by spirits in the 
body or out of the body ; also it is claimed that often a me- 
dium is controlled by a deceiving spirit, and he answers all 
questions addressed to spirits, pretending himself to be the 
different spirits. He tries to help out the medium whom 
he finds it to his interest to obsess. 

To upset wholly Hudson's syllogism you need only be- 
lieve that the control of the slate-writer was a deceiving 
spirit. I do not give this as a theory, but as the teaching of 
spme spirit cabinets. It does not seem so wholly unreason- 
able as to justify Dr. Hudson's conclusion. On either expla- 
nation, that of Hudson or that of the spirit, it is clear that 
investigators have a hard time to get at the exact truth, and 
it should make the average Spiritualist far less credulous 
than he now is, and on the other hand it should make the 
average skeptic far less dogmatic in his denials. 



sBo ARE THERE GHOSTS? 

IV 

APPARITIONS 

In all ages of the world the belief has prevailed more or 
less that the spirits of some of the dead make themselves 
objectively apparent. This age had about settled down to 
the conviction that this belief was a superstition, but now, 
principally as the result of the careful scientific investigations 
of the Society for Pyschical Research, a reaction has set in in 
many minds. A strong doubt has been cast upon the con- 
viction that the ghost is invariably a delusion. 

The Power Some Living Persons Seem to Have to 
Make Themselves Appear at a Distance 

The Society has startled all by convincing such eminent 
scientists as Sir William Crookes, Alfred Russel Wallace, 
and William James of Harvard, that it is probable that there 
are persons who even while in the body can make themselves 
objectively apparent to others at a distance, not only by 
thought transference, but by the sound of voice, and by some 
sort of projection of the visible self. It has become more 
and more believable with many hard-headed scientists that 
our conscious selves are not nearly so dependent upon our 
bodies as we have been led to believe. 

A very curious illustration of this possible power of the 
soul to leave the body is the following experience told to me 
by an elder in the church in Brooklyn of which I was pastor 
some thirty years ago. I premise by saying that this elder, 
Dr. B., was a most conscientious man, respected by all ; was 
a doctor of medicine, an inventor, and something of a scien- 
tist. I tell the story in his exact words, as nearly as I can 
recall them: 



MY ELDER'S STRANGE STORY 381 



Experience of Dr. B. Visiting at a Distance Independent 
of His Body 

" In the fifties there was an explosion in my factory in 
New York City. By the force of the explosion I was terri- 
bly burned and thrown into the street. During the sickness 
that followed, my son, Revere, attended me, while my wife 
and the rest of my family lived in Allentown, Pa. 

" One day as I lay delirious on my bed I imagined that a 
large wheel was turning near me to which I was being pushed 
by my son. I pushed myself away from this wheel, but as 
often as I did so I would be pushed back, because in reality 
I was pushing myself to the edge of the bed. At last I got 
the idea that there was a conspiracy against my life, and I 
determined to go away, and by a desperate effort got out of 
my body. I stood at the foot of the bed and with perfect 
vision I saw myself lying on the bed, bandaged and evidently 
very sick, and my son and the doctor working over me. I 
tried to talk to them but could not get their attention, so I 
concluded that I would go away. 

" I went out of the window and on Broadway entered a 
stage and rode downtown. Coming to the wharf I saw an 
excursion-boat about to go down the bay which I boarded. 
I observed that nobody paid the slightest attention to me, 
not even the ticket man who collected tickets to the right of 
me and left; he passed me by. After a while a frightful 
storm arose, it was thought that the boat would sink. The 
passengers were in terror, many praying. Finally the boat 
turned and safely reached the land. I then determined to 
go to Allentown, Pa., and visit my family. It was evening 
when I reached the house. I saw a window open on the sec- 
ond floor, through which I entered. There I saw my wife 
putting the children to bed. I heard her telling them about 
my sickness and heard her asking them in their little prayers 
to pray for me. The manifest distress of my wife troubled 
me, and I desired to let her know that I was present and 
sought to comfort her ; but I could not possibly get her 
attention. 

" The thought finally occurred to me that if I did not 
hurry back to New York I might not be able to get into my 
body again, and would really be dead ; so I went down to the 
depot, and when the train came in a man was knocked down 



382 WILL COINCIDENCE EXPLAIN? 

and run over and his legs cut off. I saw him and recognized 
him. In the train I took my seat in one of two seats that 
faced each other. The other seats were occupied by three 
prominent business men whom I knew; they ignoring my 
presence, were talking with each other about a scheme, that 
they were trying to carry through, that struck me as dis- 
honorable. I was much surprised at them. One of the men 
got out at a junction of the railroad, the other two came to 
New York City. When I got back to my room into which I 
easily entered through the window, altho it was some dis- 
tance above the ground, I found the attendants busily work- 
ing over my body thinking that I was dying. With some 
considerable effort I entered again into my body. 

" The singular part of this experience is that after I re- 
covered, I found that on that day and that hour an excursion- 
steamer went down the bay and had the storm experience 
which I saw, and that evening my wife had said the things 
to my children that I heard her say, and the accident hap- 
pened at the depot as I saw it, and the three men were seated 
in the car and had the conversation that I heard." 

Of course a single testimony like the above is not con- 
clusive. I asked the elder many questions which he answered 
clearly, but I was then new at these investigations, otherwise 
I would have gotten from him, if possible, the dates so that 
the incidents narrated by him as seen in his vision or trance 
could have been corroborated. 

I sent the above narration to Dr. B. 's two sons, who are 
still living. They write me that they heard their father tell 
this experience substantially as I here give it, that their 
father at the time spoken of was so nearly dead that it re- 
quired a physician to determine whether there was life in the 
body or not. I have no doubt that the narration in all of its 
essential features is correct, whatever may be the explana- 
tion. A very interesting question arises — whether Dr. B.'s 
wife, had she been a clairvoyant or sensitive, would have 
seen Dr. B. at the time he thought he visited the home and 
saw her putting the children to bed. If she had so seen 
him, she would have seen the £-/wst of a living person. 



PREMIER BALFOUR'S SISTER 383 

In the following incident 

A Ghost of a Living Person Appears 

The next incident I take from Mrs. Sidgwick's paper 
published in the " Proceedings of The Society for Psychical 
Research." ' Mrs. Sidgwick, it will be remembered, is the 
sister of the present English Prime Minister Balfour, and 
was wife of the late Professor Sidgwick of Cambridge Uni- 
versity. This case is also given by Frederic Myers in 
" Human Personality." The account was sent to Colonel 
Thomas W. Higginson, an associate of the American Branch 
of the S, P. R. , and by him transmitted to the Society. 

"December 18, 1889. 

" If the enclosed narrative is of any interest to the Com- 
mittee of the Society for Psychical Research it may be placed 
in the archives or be published. The incidents were related 
to me by Mr. S. R. Wilmot, a manufacturer of this city, 
several years ago, and I wrote them down from memory, and 
he afterward revised the manuscript. Mr. Wilmot and his 
wife and sister are still living here, and would, no doubt, be 
happy to answer any questions about the matter. 

" He does not know that I have had his narrative com- 
pared with a file of the New York Herald, as per memoran- 
dum appended. It seems to stand the test pretty well, how- 
ever. 

" If published, please do not give my name, as I have 
simply acted as scribe, and have no personal knowledge about 
the incidents. 

"Bridgeport, Conn, W. B. H." 

With the letter was sent a copy of the original manu- 
script, which runs : 

"On October 3, 1863, I sailed from Liverpool for New 
York, on the steamer City of Limerick, of the Inman line. 
Captain Jones commanding. On the evening of the second 
day out, soon after leaving Kinsale Head, a severe storm be- 
gan, which lasted for nine days. During this time we saw 

' Vol. vii., pp. 41-5. 



384 WIFE'S VISIT AT SEA 

neither sun nor stars nor any vessel ; the bulwarks on the 
weather bow were carried av/ay, one of the anchors broke 
loose from its lashings, and did considerable damage before 
it could be secured, and several stout storm sails, though 
closely reefed, v/ere carried away and the booms broken. 

" Upon the night following the eighth day of the storm 
the tempest moderated a little, and for the first time since 
leaving port I enjoyed refreshing sleep. Toward morning 
I dreamed that I saw my wife, whom I had left in the United 
States, come to the door of my stateroom, clad in her night- 
dress. At the door she seemed to discover that I was not 
the only occupant of the room, hesitated a little, then ad- 
vanced to my side, stooped down and kissed me, and after 
gently caressing me for a few moments, quietly withdrew, 

" Upon waking I was surprised to see my fellow passen- 
ger, whose berth was above mine, but not directly over it — 
owing to the fact that our room was at the stern of the ves- 
sel — leaning upon his elbow, and looking fixedly at me. 
'You're a pretty fellow,' said he at length, 'to have a lady 
come and visit you in this way.' I pressed him for an ex- 
planation, which he at first declined to give, but at length 
related what he had seen while wide awake, lying in his 
berth. It exactly corresponded with my dream. 

" This gentleman's name was William J. Tait, and he had 
been my room-mate in the passage out, in the preceding July, 
on the Cunard steamer Olympus ; a native of England, and 
son of a clergyman of the Established Church. He had for 
a number of years lived in Cleveland, in the State of Ohio, 
where he held the position of librarian of the Associated Li- 
brary. He was at this time perhaps fifty years of age — by 
no means in the habit of practical joking, but a sedate and 
very religious man, whose testimony upon any subject could 
be taken unhesitatingly. 

" The incident seemed so strange to me that I questioned 
him about it, and upon three separate occasions, the last one 
shortly before reaching port, Mr. Tait repeated to me the 
same account of what he had witnessed. On reaching New 
York we parted, and I never saw him afterward, but I under- 
stand that he died, a number of years ago, in Cleveland. 

"The day after landing I went by rail to Watertown, 
Conn., where my children and my wife had been for some 
time, visiting her parents. Almost her first question, v/hen 



ASTOUNDING FACT VERIFIED 385 

we were alone together, was, 'Did you receive a visit from 
me a week ago Tuesday? ' *A visit from you? ' said I, 'we 
were more than a thousand miles at sea,' T know it,' she 
replied, 'but it seemed to me that I visited you,' 'It would 
be impossible,' said I. 'Tell me what makes you think so.' 

" My wife then told me that on account of the severity 
of the weather and the reported loss of the Africa, which 
sailed for Boston on the same day that we left Liverpool for 
New York, and had gone ashore at Cape Race, she had been 
extremely anxious about me. On the night previous, the 
same night when, as mentioned above, the storm had just be- 
gun to abate, she had lain awake for a long time thinking of 
me, and about four o'clock in the morning it seemed to her 
that she went out to seek me. Crossing the wide and stormy 
sea, she came at length to a low, black steamship, whose side 
she went up, and then descending into the cabin, passed 
through it to the stern until she came to my stateroom, 
'Tell me,' said she, 'do they ever have staterooms like the 
one I saw, where the upper berth extends farther back than 
the under one ? A man was in the upper berth, looking right 
at me, and for a moment I was afraid to go in, but soon I 
went up to the side of your berth, bent down and kissed you, 
and embraced you, and then went away.' 

" The description given by my wife of the steamship was 
correct in all particulars, tho she had never seen it. I find 
by my sister's diary that we sailed October 4; the day we 
reached New York, 22d; home, 23d. 

" With the above corrections I can very willingly sub- 
scribe my name. 

" S. R. WiLMOT," 

By Mr. Hodgson's system of questions and answers, this 
incident seemed well verified. It is only one of a large 
number which indicate that the spirit has an existence inde- 
pendent of the body, even while it is in this life. 

In this case hallucination seems excluded, as three sepa- 
rate persons participated in the affair. If we in the body 
have power thus to project ourselves, it will become much 
easier to believe that spirits out of the body have power to 
make their presence also manifest. But if these appearances 
are actual outward presentations of oneself to another, it 
25 



386 VOLITION BRINGS APPARITION 

would account in some cases for spirit materializations; for 
the medium would have the power to make herself visible 
outside of the cabinet and at the same time be physically 
present in the ca,binet. This itself would be a most startling 
psychological fact should it be found to be really a fact. 

But it is not sure that these appearances are not wholly 
in the mind — are not wholly subjective. If one can so tele- 
pathicaliy impress another at a distance as to cause an hallu- 
cination, this might explain many cases. 

Mrs. Sidgwick is inclined to think that some minds have 
this power and in illustration of this view gives the following 
experience of Mr. Wesermann, a gentleman who interested 
himself in thought-transference in the beginning of the cen- 
tury. By concentrated effort of thought, he had more than 
once imposed dreams on distant friends, and he determined 
to make Lieutenant N. dream that a certain lady, who had 
been dead for five years, came to him and incited him to good 
works. He supposed that Lieutenant N. was at home and 
asleep at the time selected, but, as it happened, he was stay- 
ing in a different town with a friend, Lieutenant S., who was 
a stranger to Wesermann, and both were wide awake and 
talking. This did not interfere with the success of Weser- 
mann's experiment, however, for both gentlemen saw a figure 
resembling the lady in question enter the room noiselessly 
by a door that usually creaked, make gestures of greeting and 
go out again. It will hardly, I think, be contended that 
Wesermann called up the dead lady, or that he himself ap- 
peared in her form, or that Lieutenant S. would have seen 
her if Lieutenant N. had not been there, so that there seems 
to be no reasonable alternative except that of a telepathic 
action of Wesermann's mind on Lieutenant N., communi- 
cated in some way through him to Lieutenant S. 

Frank Podmore gives the case of Rev. Clarence Godfrey 
of England, who by willing could make others see him miles 
away. ^ 

1 Mj'ers's " Human Personality," vol. i., pp. 684-700. 



EFFORTS AT SELF-PROJECTION 387 

The following case I give entire from the report of the 
Society for Psychical Research.^ The experiment was made 
by Joseph Kirk through whom other experiments were made 
by the Society — a gentleman in whom the Society had full 
confidence. 



Joseph Kirk — His Appearing to a Lady Friend at a Distance 

"2, RiPON-viLLAs, Upper Ripon-road, Plumstead, 

"July 7, 1890. 

"I have to inform you that from the loth to 20th June 
I tried a telepathic experiment each night upon Miss G. I 
did so, as suggested by you in your letter of June 3, with- 
out her knowledge, as a preliminary to entering upon experi- 
ments with her under conditions of expectancy and the re- 
cording of dates and hours. Each trial had for its object 
the rendering myself visible to her — simply visible. With 
the exception of one — which was made one afternoon from 
my office in the Arsenal — each trial took place at my house 
between the hours of 1 1 p.m. and i a.m. 

" Up to June 23 I heard nothing direct from my 'subject.' 
Indirectly, however, I learned that my influence was acting 
rather strongly. Each time Miss G. came to my house, 
while the experiments were in progress, she complained of 
being kept sleepless and restless from an uneasy feeling 
which she was unable to describe or account for. On one 
night, so strong was this uneasy feeling, she was compelled 
to get up, dress herself, and take to some needlework, and was 
unable to throw off the sensation and return to bed until two 
o'clock. I made no comments on these complaints — never 
dropped a hint, even, as to what I was doing. Under these 
circumstances it seemed probable to me that, altho my influ- 
ence was telling upon her, to her discomfort, I had not suc- 
ceeded in the object of my experiments. Supposing this to 
be the case, and that I was only depriving her of rest, I 
thought it best to discontinue the trials for a time. 

" I felt disappointed at this apparently barren result. 
But, on June 23, an agreeable surprise was sprung upon me, 
in that I learned I had most effectually succeeded on one 

> Proceedings, S. P. R., pp. 270-3. 



388 CURIOUS SUCCESS 

occasion — the very occasion on which I had considered suc- 
cess as being highly improbable — in presenting myself to 
Miss G. As you will find in her statement, herewith en- 
closed, the vision was most complete and realistic. The trial 
which had this fortunate result was that I had made from 
my office and on the spur of the moment. I had been rather 
closely engaged on some auditing work, which had tired me, 
and as near as I can remember the time was between 3 130 
and 4 P.M., that I laid down my pencil, stretched myself, 
and in the act of doing the latter I was seized with the im- 
pulse to make a trial on Miss G. I did not, of course, know 
where she was at the moment, but, with a flash, as it were, I 
transferred myself to her bedroom. I can not say why I 
thought of that spot, unless it was that I did so because my 
first experiment had been made there. ^ As it happened, it 
was what I must call a ' lucky shot,' for I caught her at the 
moment she was lightly sleeping in her chair — a condition 
which seems to be peculiarly favorable to receiving and ex- 
ternalizing telepathic messages. 

" The figure seen by Miss G. was clothed in a suit I was 
at the moment wearing, and was bareheaded, the latter as 
would be the case, of course, in an office. This suit is of a 
dark reddish-brown check stuff, and it was an unusual circum- 
stance for me to have had on the coat at the time, as I wear, 
as a rule, an office coat of light material. But this office- 
coat I had, a day or so before, sent to a tailor to be repaired, 
and I had, therefore, to keep on that belonging to the dark 
suit. 

" I tested the reality of the vision by this dark suit. I 
asked, 'Hov/ was I dressed.-* ' (not at all a leading question). 
The reply of Miss G. was, touching the sleeve of the coat I 
was then wearing (of a light suit): 'Not this coat, but that 
dark suit you wear sometimes. I even saw clearly the small 
check pattern of it ; and I saw your features as plainly as tho 
you had been bodily present. I could not have seen you 
more distinctly.' " 

' The first experiment of this series was on the ni^ht of the loth, the successful 
experiment on the afternoon of June ii (Wednesday). Mr. Kirk tells us that he 
made a note at the time on his blotting-paper of day and hour. Mr. Kirk had on 
four occasions during the previous four years tried from a distance to produce an 
impression of presence on Miss G. with considerable success, but had not tried to 
appear to her. These experiments and others are described in the Journal S. P. 
R., vol. v., pp. 21-30. 



NO DREAM 389 

Miss G. 's account is : 

"June 28, 1890. 

" A peculiar occurrence happened to me on the Wednes- 
day of the week before last. In the afternoon (being tired 
by a morning walk), while sitting in an easy-chair near the 
window of my own room, I fell asleep. At any time I hap- 
pen to sleep during the day (which is but seldom) I invari- 
ably awake with tired uncomfortable sensations, which take 
some little time to pass off; but that afternoon, on the con- 
trary, I was suddenly quite wide awake, seeing Mr. Kirk 
standing near my chair, dressed in a dark-brown coat, which 
I had frequently seen him wear. His back was toward the 
window, his right hand toward me ; he passed across the 
room toward the door, which is opposite the window, the 
space between being fifteen feet, the furniture so arranged as 
to leave just that center clear; but when he got about four 
feet from the door, which was closed, he disappeared. 

" My first thought was, * had this happened a few hours 
later I should have believed it telepathic,' for I knew Mr. 
Kirk had tried experimenting at different times, but had no 
idea he was doing so recently. Altho I have been much in- 
terested by his conversation about psychic phenomena at 
various times during the past year, I must confess the ele- 
ment of doubt would very forcibly present itself as to whether 
telepathic communication could be really a fact ; and I then 
thought, knowing he must be at the office at the time I saw 
him (which was quite as distinctly as if he had been really in 
the room), that in this instance, at least, it must be purely 
imaginary, and feeling so sure it was only fancy, resolved not 
to mention it, and did not do so until this week, when, almost 
involuntarily, I told him all about it. Much to my astonish- 
ment, Mr. Kirk was very pleased with the account, and asked 
me to write it, telling me that on that afternoon, feeling 
rather tired, he put down his pen for a few moments, and, to 
use his own words, ' threw himself into this room. ' He also 
told me he had purposely avoided this subject in my presence 
lately, that he might not influence me, but was anxiously 
hoping I would introduce it. 

" I feel sure I had not been dreaming of him, and can not 
remember that anything had happened to cause me even to 
think of him that afternoon before falling asleep." 



390 IS THE VISION MENTAL? 

Mr. Kirk writes later : 

" I have only succeeded once in making myself visible 
to Miss G. since the occasion I have already reported, and 
that had the singularity of being only my features — my face 
in miniature, that is, about three inches in diameter." 

In a letter dated January 19, 1891, Mr. Kirk says as to 
this last appearance : 

" Miss G. did not record this at the time, as she attached 
no importance to it, but I noted the date (July 23) on my 
office blotting-pad, as it was at the office I was thinking of 
her. I say ' thinking,' because I was doing so in connection 
with another subject, and with no purpose of making an ex- 
periment. I had a headache and was resting my head on my 
left hand. Suddenly it occurred to me that my thinking 
about her might probably influence her in some way, and I 
made the note I have mentioned. ^ 

" Mrs. Sidgwick had a talk with Mr. Kirk and Miss G. 
on April 8, 1892, about the above incidents and other ex- 
periments in thought-transference between them, and writes : 

" 'Mr. Kirk's appearance to Miss G. evidently impressed 
her very much. It was extremely realistic. She is quite 
sure she was awake. It was as if she had waked up to see 
it, but she had not been dreaming of Mr. Kirk. The figure 
did not look toward her or appear to take any interest in 
her. The other time she saw his face it was like a minia- 
ture. She did not think so much of that experience.' " 

It now seems certain that some living people have the 
power of making others see them at a distance. Whether 
this vision is mental or seen by the eye is not yet certainly 
established. It is certain that the person who sees the vision 
is often as sure that he sees it with his eyes as he is of any- 
thing else that his eyes see. It seems that the mind has 
power at times to send out waves on the ocean of ether that 
surrounds us ; has it also power to transmit some material 

1 Mr. Kirk enclosed the piece of blotting-paper with the note. 



DO THE DEAD REAPPEAR? 391 

essence of ourselves that will report to the outward eye of 
another? It is a most interesting problem, well worthy of 
great effort to solve. 

Have the Dead Power to Reappear on the Earth 
Independent of So-called Mediums? 

If the souls of some living men have the power of ma- 
king themselves visible outside the body, why should it be 
necessarily absurd that some souls who have passed out of 
the body through death should be able to so visit persons in 
the flesh? This power to transmit thought waves in the 
ether ocean can scarcely belong to the body; it is more 
reasonable to believe that it belongs to the mind or soul. 
Are we sure that death changes the powers of the mind or 
changes the powers of the soul ? Is it not possible that it 
will increase these powers rather than lessen them ? 

But what are the facts ? 

Are there ghosts ? 

Of course there are many superstitions, many, many 
frauds. 

But is there anything more ? 

Let us now free ourselves from all judgment for or against 
the ghost theory, and view the facts gathered and sifted by 
the Society for Psychical Research, and by others. 

Case I. — In Part I. I tell of a family experience which 
happened when I was a young man in ray father's house. 
An aunt who was visiting us died suddenly at about mid- 
night. Her son-in-law was a well-to-do farmer living about 
two miles in the country. The aunt had been in good health 
up to a few moments of her death. At about the time of 
her death her son-in-law went to a spring about one hundred 
yards from his home for water. As he approached the 
spring he saw the form of his mother-in-law standing by the 
spring as natural as in life, and yet he was somehow im- 
pressed that it was her spirit. He did not know until the 
next morning of her death. 



392 LORD BROUGHAM'S VISION 

Case II. — Lord Brougham gives an extraordinary in- 
cident in his personal experience ; it was originally an entry 
in his diary, I quote from " Phantasms of the Living " (vol. 
i., pp. 394-7) : 

" The entry must apparently have been made very soon 
after the occurrence which it describes ; as we can scarcely 
doubt that had the fact of his friend's death, which he learned 
soon afterward, been known to him at the time of writing, he 
would have included it in his account. In December, 1799, 
Lord Brougham was traveling in Sweden with friends. [He 
says, ] 

" We set out for Gothenburg [apparently on December 
18] determining to make for Norway. About one o'clock 
in the morning, arriving at a decent inn, we decided to stop 
for the night. Tired with the cold of yesterday, I was glad 
to take advantage of a hot bath before I turned in, and here 
a most remarkable thing happened to me — so remarkable 
that I must tell the story from the beginning, 

"After I left the High School, I went with G., my most 
intimate friend, to attend the classes in the University. 
There was no divinity class, but we frequently in our walks 
discussed and speculated upon many grave subjects — among 
others, on the immortality of the soul, and on a future state. 
This question, and the possibility, I will not say of ghosts 
walking, but of the dead appearing to the living, were sub- 
jects of much speculation : and we actually committed the 
folly of drawing up an agreement, written with our blood, to 
the effect that whichever of us died the first should appear 
to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained 
of the 'life after death.' After we had finished our classes 
at the college, G, went to India, having got an appointment 
there in the Civil Service. He seldom wrote to me, and 
after the lapse of a few years I had almost forgotten him ; 
moreover, his family having little connection with Edin- 
burgh, I seldom saw or heard anything of them, or of him 
through them, so that all this schoolboy intimacy had died 
out, and I had nearly forgotten his existence. I had taken, 
as I have said, a warm bath, and while lying in it and enjoy- 
ing the comfort of the heat, after the late freezing I had un- 
dergone, I turned my head round, looking toward the chair 
on which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get 



AN ASTOUNDING STORY 393 

out of the bath. On the chair sat G., looking calmly at me. 
How I got out of the bath I know not, but on recovering my 
senses I found myself sprawling on the floor. The appa- 
rition, or whatever it was, that had taken the likeness of G., 
had disappeared. 

" This vision produced such a shock that I had no incli- 
nation to talk about it or to speak about it even to Stuart ; 
but the impression it made upon me was too vivid to be easily 
forgotten ; and so strongly was I affected by it that I have 
here written down the whole history, with the date, 19th De- 
cember, and all the particulars as they are now fresh before 
me. No doubt I had fallen asleep ; and that the appearance 
presented so distinctly to my eyes was a dream, I can not for 
a moment doubt ; yet for years I had had no communication 
with G. , nor had there been anything to recall him to my 
recollection; nothing had taken place during our Swedish 
travels either connected with G. or with India, or with any- 
thing relating to him or to any member of his family. I 
recollected quickly enough our old discussion and the bar- 
gain we had made. I could not discharge from my mind 
the impression that G. must have died, and that his appear- 
ance to me was to be received by me as a proof of a future 
state, yet all the while I felt convinced that the whole was a 
dream ; and so painfully vivid, so unfading was the impres- 
sion, that I could not bring myself to talk of it, or to make 
the slightest allusion to it." 

Lord Brougham afterward wrote that " Soon after my re- 
turn to Edinburgh, there arrived a letter from India, an- 
nouncing G.'s death, and stating that he had died on the 
19th of December! " Was this a dream, as Lord Brougham 
was inclined to think.'' Was it coincidence; if not, what was 
it.-* The profound impression the incident had on Lord 
Brougham's mind, the finding himself sprawling on the floor, 
and the identity of dates are hard to reconcile with either a 
dream or the hypothesis of coincidence. 

Case III. — This case ' has been partly verified by the 
S. P. R., who have looked up the official records of the date of 
death and burial of the bishop, and have corresponded with 
several of the living. The family does not wish their names 

» Proceedings, S. P. R., vol. v., pp. 4&>-i. 



394 A DEAD BISHOP RETURNS 

given. The mother writes this account — her recollection 
seems very distinct, and she adds as a sort of postscript : 

" ' You may safely vouch for the truth to the letter of the 
statement. I could never in my life forget one incident of 
this visitation : ' " 

" 'During my visit to the convent at St. Quay, Pontrieux 
(August, 1882) with my two daughters and son, the good sis- 
ters had only one good room for me and my two girls. It 
was the room set apart for the Bishop of St. Brieux when he 
visited the convent, and was in the priest's house. On the 
morning after our arrival I did not go out with my children, 
but being very tired I lay down on a little bed. The sun 
was shining, and it was very hot, but before I lay down I 
placed a chair against the bedroom door, as there was only 
a latch on the door, and no bolt or key. I went to sleep 
only for a few minutes, and was suddenly awakened by a soft 
touch on my chest. On opening my eyes, I saw a venerable 
old man, with something of a white and black dress on, kneel- 
ing by the side of the bed on which I lay, with hands clasped 
in prayer, and looking up to the wall over the bed. I looked 
at him silently, and he rose, and when going to the door he 
raised his two hands and said Te beni [je te b^nis ?] three 
times quite distinctly, and I lost him. I got up instantly 
and went to the door, thinking he was some old priest who 
had come to pray before the crucifix which I then saw for 
the first time on the wall over the bed; but to my surprise I 
found the door shut, and the chair before it, as I had placed 
it before I lay down. The old sister who waited on us had 
her room close to ours ; so I called her and told her that an 
old priest had come into my room to pray before the crucifix. 
The old nun said that there was not a man on all the prem- 
ises, nor a priest, as they were all gone to the funeral of the 
Bishop of St. Brieux, sixteen miles away, which was being 
performed at that time. I described the appearance and 
dress, and what he said to me. She immediately went down 
on her knees to me and said, " You are blessed indeed, for it 
was the bishop himself." He had come to his accustomed 
place of prayer for the last time on earth.' " 

This writer has never had any other hallucination of the 
senses, and refuses to regard this vision as a hallucination. 



STRONGLY VERIFIED 395 

Her daughter writes, under date April 18, 1889: 
"'My sister and I have the liveliest recollection of our 
mother telling us about seeing the Bishop, directly we came 
in from a walk. ' " 

It was learned from the French official records that Mgr. 
Augustin David, Bishop of St. Brieux, died July 27, 1882, 
and was buried at St. Brieux, Tuesday, August i, at 10 
A.M. , which so far confirms the account given above. 

Case IV. — This is a case given at great length in the 
Proceedings of The S'ociety for Psychical Research, vol. viii., 
pp. 311-332. Much time and labor have been given to verify 
it; Frederic Myers himself gave it much attention, and de- 
votes many pages to it in " Human Personality," vol. ii., pp. 
389-396. Miss R. C. Morton, the chief witness, " is a lady 
of scientific training," says Dr. Myers, " and was at the time 
her account was written (in April, 1892) preparing to be a 
physician." The Society has from six other witnesses "in- 
dependent first-hand statements. " 

Miss M. gives the following account of her first experi- 
ence with the apparition : 

" * I had gone up to my room, but was not yet in bed, when 
I heard some one at the door, and went to it, thinking it 
might be my mother. On opening the door, I saw no one ; 
but on going a few steps along the passage, I saw the figure 
of a tall lady, dressed in black, standing at the head of the 
stairs. After a few moments she descended the stairs, and 
I followed for a short distance, feeling curious what it could 
be. I had only a small piece of candle, and it suddenly 
burnt itself out ; and being unable to see more, I went back 
to my room. 

" 'The figure was that of a tall lady, dressed in black of a 
soft woolen material, judging from the slight sound in mov- 
ing. The face was hidden in a handkerchief held in the 
right hand. This is all I noticed then ; but on further occa- 
sions, when I was able to observe her more closely, I saw the 
upper part of the left side of the forehead, and a little of the 
hair above. Her left hand was nearly hidden by her sleeve 
and a fold of her dress. As she held it down a portion of a 



396 "A HAUNTED HOUSE" 

widow's cuff was visible on both wrists, so that the whole 
impression was that of a lady in widow's weeds. There was 
no cap on the head, but a general effect of blackness suggested 
a bonnet, with long veil or a hood.' " 

After this, for a number of years, the vision appeared 
again and again. Miss Morton, who was a capital witness, 
not being in the least nervous, frequently followed the appa- 
rition ; if she " cornered " it, it would suddenly disappear. 
Many others saw it independently of Miss Morton ; some 
who had no knowledge that the apparition had appeared to 
others and was expected. It was seen both in the house and 
outside the house in the garden. Miss M. often spoke to 
it, but received no answer. 

Miss M., in the report published by the Society for 
Psychical Research, sums up the proofs of the immateriality 
of the apparition : 

" ' I. I have several times fastened fine strings across the 
stairs at various heights before going to bed, but after all 
others have gone up to their rooms. These were fastened 
in the following way : I made small pellets of marine glue, 
into which I inserted the ends of the cord, then stuck one 
pellet lightly against the wall and the other to the banister, 
the string being thus stretched across the stairs. They were 
knocked down by a very slight touch, and yet would not be 
felt by any one passing up or down the stairs, and by candle- 
light could not be seen from below. They were put at vari- 
ous heights from the ground from six inches to the height of 
the banisters, about three feet. I have twice, at least, seen 
the figure pass through the cords, leaving them intact. 

" * 2. The sudden and complete disappearance of the fig- 
ure, while still in full view. 

" ' 3. The impossibility of touching the figure. I have 
repeatedly followed it into a corner, when it disappeared, and 
have tried suddenly to pounce upon it, but have never suc- 
ceeded in touching it or getting my hand up to it, the figure 
eluding my touch. 

" ' 4. It has appeared in a room with the doors shut. 

" ' On the other hand, the figure was not called up by a 
desire to see it, for on every occasion when we had made 



IDENTIFICATION 397 

special arrangements to watch for it, we never saw it. On 
several occasions we have sat up at night hoping to see it, 
but in vain, — my father, with my brother-in-law, myself with 
a friend three or four times, an aunt and myself twice, and 
my friends more than once ; but on none of these occasions 
was anything seen. Nor have the appearances been seen 
after we have been talking or thinking much of the figure. 

" ' The figure has been connected with the second Mrs. 
S. ; the grounds for which are : 

" ' I. The complete history of the house is known, and if 
we are to connect the figure with any of the previous occu- 
pants, she is the onl}'^ person who in any way resembled it. 

" ' 2. The widow's garb excludes the first Mrs. S. 

" ' 3. Altho none of us had ever seen the second Mrs. S., 
several people who /md known her identified her from our 
description. On being shown a photo-album containing a 
number of portraits, I picked out one of her sisters as being 
most like that of the figure, and was afterward told that the 
sisters were much alike. 

" ' 4. Her step-daughter and others told us that she espe- 
cially used the front drawing-room in which she continually 
appeared, and that her habitual seat was on a couch placed 
in a similar position to ours, 

" ' 5. The figure is undoubtedly connected with the 
house, none of the percipients having seen it anywhere else, 
nor had any other hallucination. 

" * In writing the above account, my memory of the oc- 
currences has been largely assisted by reference to a set of 
journal letters written [to Miss Campbell] at the time and by 
notes of interviews held by Mr. Myers with my father and 
various members of our family.' " 

This case, as proof of the reality of some apparitions, is 
a remarkably strong one. I regret that my space limits will 
not permit me to give it entire, but I urge all who are inter- 
ested in these studies not to make the mistake of passing this 
by as one of the ordinary ghost stories. 

The number of cases of the appearance of apparitions 
given by the S. P. R. is large, and many of them are so well 
authenticated as to make it difficult to refuse belief. 



398 SCIENTIST WALLACE'S REASONING 

The scientist Alfred Russel Wallace gives a number of 
cases that carry with them much evidence. Wallace, among 
many other proofs of the reality of these apparitions, describes 
their effect upon animals. He argues the case as follows : * 

" Effects of Phantasms on Animals. — -We now come to a 
group of phenomena which, altho frequently recorded in the 
publications of the Society for Psychical Research, have re- 
ceived no special attention as bearing on the theories put 
forth by members of the Society, but have either been ignored 
or have been attempted to be explained away by arbitrary as- 
sumptions of the most improbable kind. It will, therefore, 
be necessary to refer to the evidence for these facts some- 
what more fully than for those hitherto considered. 

" I have already mentioned the case of the female figure 
in white, seen by three persons floating over a hedge ten feet 
above the ground, when the horse they were driving 'sud- 
denly stopped and shook with fright. ' In the remarks upon 
this case in ' Phantasms of the Living,' no reference is made 
to this fact, yet it is surely the crucial one, since we can 
hardly suppose that a wholly subjective apparition, seen by 
human beings, would also be seen by a horse. During the 
tremendous knocking recorded by Mr. Garling, and already 
quoted, it is stated that there was a large dog in a kennel 
near the front entrance, especially to warn off intruders, and 
a little terrier inside that barked at everybody; yet, when 
the noise occurred that wakened the servants sixty feet away, 
' the dogs gave no tongue whatever; the terrier, contrary to 
its nature, slunk shivering under the sofa, and would not stop 
even at the door, and nothing could induce him to go into 
the darkness.' 

" In the remarkable account of a haunted house during 
an occupation of twelve months by a well-known English 
church dignitary, the very different behavior of dogs in the 
presence of real and of phantasmal disturbances is pointed 
out. When an attempt was made to rob the vicarage, the 
dogs gave prompt alarm and the clergyman was aroused by 
their fierce barking. During the mysterious noises, however, 
tho these were much louder and more disturbing, they 
never barked at all, but were always ' found cowering in a 
state of pitiable terror.' They are said to have been more 

1 " Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," pp. 235-244. 



GHOSTS FRIGHTEN ANIMALS 399 

perturbed than any other members of the establishment, and 
* if not shut up below, would make their way to our bedroom 
door and lie there, crouching and whining, as long as we 
would allow them. ' ^ 

" In the account of haunting in a house at Hammersmith, 
near London, which went on for five years, where steps and 
noises were heard and a phantom woman seen, ' the dog 
whined incessantly ' during the disturbances, and ' the dog was 
evidently still afraid of the room when the morning came. I 
called to him to go into it with me, and he crouched down with 
his tail between his legs, and seemed to fear entering it.' '"' 

" On the occasion of a 'wailing cry,' heard before a death 
in a rectory in Staffordshire, a house standing quite alone in 
open country, 'we found a favorite bulldog, a very courageous 
animal, trembling with terror, with his nose thrust into some 
billets of firewood which were kept under the stairs.' On 
another occasion, ' an awful howling followed by shriek upon 
shriek,' with a sound like that caused by a strong wind was 
heard, altho everything out of doors was quite still, and it is 
stated, 'We had three dogs sleeping in my sisters' and my 
bedrooms, and they were all cowering down with affright, 
their bristles standing straight up ; one — a bulldog — was un- 
der the bed, and refused to come out, and when removed was 
found to be trembling all over.' ^ The remark of Mrs. Sidg- 
wick on these and other cases of warning sounds is, that 'if 
not real natural sounds, they must have been collective hal- 
lucinations.' But it has not been shown that ' real natural 
sounds ' ever produce such effects upon dogs, and there is no 
suggestion that ' collective hallucination ' can be telepatheti- 
cally transferred to these animals. In one case, however, it 
is suggested that the dog might have ' been suddenly taken 
ill!' 

" In the remarkable account by General Barter, C.B., of 
a phantasmal pony and rider with two native grooms seen in 
India, two dogs which immediately before were hunting about 
in the brushwood jungle which covered the hill came and 
crouched by the general's side, giving low, frightened whim- 
pers ; and when he pursued the phantasm the dogs returned 
home, tho on all other occasions they were his most faithful 
companions. * 

> Proc. Soc. for Psych. Res,, Part vi., p. 151- "^ Ibid., Part viii., p. 116. 

* Ibid.^ Part xiii., pp. 307-308. ^ Ibid., Part xiv., pp. 469, 470. 



400 THE WESLEYS' DOG 

" These cases, given on the best authority by the Society 
for Psychical Research, can be supplemented by a reference 
to older writers. During the disturbances at Mr. Mompes- 
son's house at Tedworth, recorded by the Rev. Joseph Glan- 
vil, from personal observation and inquiry, in his work ' Sad- 
ducismus Triumphatus,' * it was noted that when the noise 
was loudest, and came with the most sudden surprising 
violence, no dog about the house would move, tho the 
knocking was oft so boisterous and rude that it hath been 
heard to a considerable distance in the fields, and awakened 
the neighbors in the village, none of whom live very near 
this.' 

" So in the disturbances at Epworth Parsonage, an account 
of which is given by the eminent John Wesley, after descri- 
bing strange noises as of iron and glass thrown down, he con- 
tinues : 'Soon after our large mastiff dog came, and ran to 
shelter himself between them (Mr. and Mrs. Wesley). While 
the disturbances continued, he used to bark and leap, and 
snap on one side and the other, and that frequently before 
any person in the room heard any noise at all. But after two 
or three days he used to tremble, and creep away before the 
noise began. And by this the family knew it was at hand ; 
nor did the observation ever fail. ' ' 

" During the disturbances at the Cemetery of Ahrens- 
burg, in the island of Oesel, where coffins were overturned in 
locked vaults, and the case was investigated by an official 
commission, the horses of country people visiting the ceme- 
tery were often so alarmed and excited that they became cov- 
ered with sweat and foam. Sometimes they threw them- 
selves on the ground, where they struggled in apparent agony, 
and notwithstanding the immediate resort to remedial meas- 
ures, several died within a day or two. In this case, as in 
so many others, altho the commission made a most rigid in- 
vestigation, and applied the strictest tests, no natural cause 
for the disturbances was ever discovered.* 

"In Dr. Justinus Kerner's account of 'The Seeress of 
Prevorst,' it is stated of an apparition that appeared to her 
during an entire year, that as often as a spirit appeared a 
black terrier that was kept in the house seemed to be sensi- 

i The account of these disturbances is given in Dr. Adam Clarke's " Memoirs 
of the Wesley Family"; in Southey's "Life of Wesley"; and in many other 
works. 

'R. D. Owen's *' Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," pp. 186-192. 



DOGS LEAVE HAUNTED HOUSE 401 

ble of its presence ; for no sooner was the figure perceptible 
to the seeress than the dog ran, as if for protection, to some 
one present, often howling loudly ; and after his first sight of 
it he would never remain alone of nights. In this case no 
one saw the figure but the seeress, showing that this circum- 
stance is not proof of the subjectivity of an apparition. 

" In the terrible case of haunting given to Mr. R. Dale 
Owen by Mrs. S. C. Hall, who was personally cognizant of 
the main facts, the haunted man had not been able to keep a 
dog for years. One which he brought home when Mrs. Hall 
became acquainted with him (he being the brother of her 
bosom friend) could not be induced to stay in his room day 
or night after the haunting began, and soon afterward ran 
away and was lost. ^ 

" In the wonderful case of haunting in Pennsylvania given 
by Mr. Hodgson in The Arena of September, 1890 (p. 419), 
when the apparition of the white lady appeared to the infor- 
mant's brother, we find it stated: — 'The third night he saw 
the dog crouch and stare, and then act as if driven round the 
room. Brother saw nothing, but heard a sort of rustle, and 
the poor dog howled and tried to hide, and never again would 
that dog go to that room.' 

" Now this series of cases of the effect of phantasms on 
animals is certainly remarkable and worthy of deep consid- 
eration. The facts are such as, on the theories of telepathy 
and hallucination, ought not to happen, and they are espe- 
cially trustworthy facts because they are almost invariably 
introduced into the narratives as if unexpected; while that 
they were noticed and recorded shows that the observers 
were in no degree panic-struck with terror. They show us 
unmistakably that large numbers of phantasms, whether 
visual or auditory, and even when only perceptible to one of 
the persons present, are objective realities; while the terror 
displayed by the animals that perceive them, and their be- 
havior, so unlike that in the presence of natural sights and 
sounds, no less clearly proves that, tho objective, the phe- 
nomena are not normal, and are not to be explained as in 
any way due to trick or to misinterpreted natural sounds. 
Yet these crucial facts, which a true theory must take ac- 
count of, have hitherto been treated as unimportant, and, ex- 
cept for a few casual remarks by Mr. Myers and Mrs. Sidg- 

> "Footfalls from the Boundary of Another World," pp. 326-329. 



402 HELPLESS INVESTIGATORS 

wick, have been left out of consideration in all the serious 
attempts hitherto made to account for these phenomena. " 

This reasoning of Wallace, and much more like it in his 
book, is well fitted to impress one as sane. To believe that 
this is the action of the human mind on the minds of ani- 
mals seems to require much more credulity than the belief 
that the power that organized a visible body around a human 
spirit might, for some reason, at times organize another at 
death, or after death, around the spirit. This terror often 
seizes animals before any person present is conscious of 
having had any thought of a ghost. Can a mind that is not 
thinking of a ghost create the image in the mind of a dog 
or of a horse .-* It seems a very hard thing to believe. 



V 

SECONDARY PERSONALITY— OBSESSIONS 

Here also fraud is the rule. Sometimes the deception is 
wholly unconscious, but is none the less deception. The 
unconscious mind is now known to have powers often far 
beyond the conscious mind. Then there are the great unex- 
plored fields of " secondary personalities," — almost wholly 
unexplored. One who has not studied the phenomena of 
" secondary personalities " is poorly fitted to investigate Spir- 
itualism as it now exhibits itself. He is well-nigh helpless. 

There are those who can at will believe themselves to be 
Daniel Webster, Lincoln, Shakespeare, Dick Turpin, or Jack 
the Ripper — any person dead or living — and yet these people 
are not to be classed with the insane. I have scores of times 
witnessed their impersonations. At that time the face of 
the medium will suddenly assume the look and even some- 
thing of the shape of the face of the one he thinks himself to 
be. The words, the voice, the thoughts, the mannerisms, 
are marvelously alike. 



DR. WEIR MITCHELL'S STORY 403 

If this person is a medium — if he knows anything about 
Spiritualism, he is very likely to be — he will in the circle 
assume character after character of almost any one living or 
dead who is inquired after. You ask for the spirit of your 
brother John, and John will probably come, even tho you 
never had a brother John. The medium all the while may 
\iQ. perfectly honest. 

Dr. Weir Mitchell gives an account of a woman in Penn- 
sylvania, in which alternate personalities controlled. The 
woman at first was of a melancholic disposition. Dr. Mitchell 
says ^ : 

" Another remarkable case is that of Mary Reynolds. 
This dull and melancholy young woman, inhabiting the Penn- 
sylvania wilderness in 181 1, was found one morning, long 
after her habitual time for rising, in a profound sleep from 
which it was impossible to arouse her. After eighteen or 
twenty hours of sleeping she awakened, but in a state of un- 
natural consciousness. Memory had fled. To all intents 
and purposes she was as a being for the first time ushered 
into the world. 'All of the past that remained to her was 
the faculty of pronouncing a few words, and this seems to 
have been as purely instinctive as the wailings of an infant ; 
for at first the words which she uttered were connected with 
no ideas in her mind.' Until she was taught their signifi- 
cance they were unmeaning sounds. 

" Her eyes were virtually for the first time opened upon 
the world. Old things had passed away : all things had be- 
come new. Her parents, brothers, sisters, friends, were not 
recognized or acknowledged as such by her. She had never 
seen them before, — never known them, — was not aware that 
such persons had been. Now for the first time she was in- 
troduced to their company and acquaintance. To the scenes 
by which she was surrounded she was a perfect stranger. 
The house, the fields, the forest, the hills, the vales, the 
streams, — all were novelties. The beauties of the landscape 
were all unexplored. 

" She had not the slightest consciousness that she had 
ever existed previous to the moment in which she awoke 

• Dr. Weir Mitchell, Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 
April 4, 1888. 



404 A CHANGED PERSON 

from that mysterious slumber. 'In a word, she was an in- 
fant, just born, yet born in a state of maturity, with a ca- 
pacity for relishing the rich, sublime, luxuriant wonders of 
created nature.' 

" The first lesson in her education was to teach her by 
what ties she was bound to those by whom she was sur- 
rounded, and the duties devolving upon her accordingly. 
This she was very slow to learn, and, ' indeed, never did 
learn, or, at least, never would acknowledge the ties of con- 
sanguinity, or scarcely those of friendship. She considered 
those she had once known as for the most part strangers and 
enemies, among whom she was, by some remarkable and un- 
accountable means, transplanted, tho from what region or 
state of existence was a problem unsolved.' 

" The next lesson was to reteach her the arts of reading 
and writing. She was apt enough, and made such rapid 
progress in both that in a few weeks she had readily relearned 
to read and write. In copying her name, which her brother 
had written for her as a first lesson, she took her pen in a 
very awkward manner and began to copy from right to left 
in the Hebrew mode, as tho she had been transplanted from 
an Eastern soil. 

" The next thing that is noteworthy is the change which 
took place in her disposition. Instead of being melancholy 
she was now cheerful to extremity. Instead of being re- 
served she was buoyant and social. Formerly taciturn and 
retiring, she was now merry and jocose. Her disposition 
was totally and absolutely changed. While she was, in this 
second state, extravagantly fond of company, she was much 
more enamored of nature's works, as exhibited in the forests, 
hills, vales, and watercourses. She used to start in the 
morning, either on foot or horseback, and ramble until night- 
fall over the whole country; nor was she at all particular 
whether she were on a path or in the trackless forest. Her 
predilection for this m.anner of life may have been occasioned 
by the restraint necessarily imposed upon her by her friends, 
which caused her to consider them her enemies and not com- 
panions, and she was glad to keep out of their way. 

" She knew no fear, and as bears and panthers were 
numerous in the woods, and rattlesnakes and copperheads 
abounded everywhere, her friends told her of the danger to 
which she exposed herself, but it produced no other effect 



UTTERLY FEARLESS 405 

than to draw forth a contemptuous laugh, as she said : ' I know 
you only want to frighten me and keep me at home, but you 
miss it, for I often see your bears and I am perfectly con- 
vinced that they are nothing more than black hogs.' 

" One evening, after her return from her daily excursion, 
she told the following incident: 'As I was riding to-day 
along a narrow path a great black hog came out of the woods 
and stopped before me. I never saw such an impudent black 
hog before. It stood up on its hind feet and grinned and 
gnashed its teeth at me. I could not m.ake the horse go on. 
I told him he was a fool to be frightened at a hog, and tried 
to whip him past, but he would not go and wanted to turn 
back. I told the hog to get out of the way, but he did not 
mind me. "Well," said I, "if you won't for words, I'll try 
blows " ; so I got off and took a stick, and walked up toward 
it. When I got pretty close by, it got down on all fours and 
walked away slowly and sullenly, stopping every few steps 
and looking back and grinning and growling. Then I got 
on my horse and rode on.' . . . 

" Thus it continued for five weeks, when one morning, 
after a protracted sleep, she awoke and was herself again. 
She recognized the parental, the brotherly, and sisterly ties 
as tho nothing had happened, and immediately went about 
the performance of duties incumbent upon her, and which 
she had planned five weeks previously. Great was her sur- 
prise at the change which one night (as she supposed) had 
produced. Nature bore a different aspect. Not a trace was 
left in her mind of the giddy scenes through which she had 
passed. Her ramblings through the forest, her tricks and 
humor, all were faded from her memory, and not a shadow 
left behind. Her parents saw their child ; her brothers and 
sisters saw their sister. She now had all the knowledge that 
she had possessed in her first state previous to the change, 
still fresh and in as vigorous exercise as tho no change had 
been. But any new acquisitions she had made, and any new 
ideas she had obtained, were lost to her now — yet not lost, 
but laid up out of sight in safe-keeping for future use. Of 
course her natural disposition returned; her melancholy was 
deepened by the information of what had occurred. All 
went on in the old-fashioned way, and it was fondly hoped 
that the mysterious occurrences of those five weeks would 
never be repeated, but these anticipations were not to be real- 



4o6 STRANGE SECONDARY SELF 

ized. After the lapse of a few weeks she fell into a pro- 
found sleep, and awoke in her second state, taking up her 
new life again precisely where she had left it when she be- 
fore passed from that state. She was not now a daughter or 
a sister. All the knowledge she possessed was that acquired 
during the few weeks of her former period of second con- 
sciousness. She knew nothing of the intervening time. 
Two periods widely separated were brought into contact. 
She thought it was but one night. 

" In this state she came to understand perfectly the facts 
of her case, not from memory, but from information. Yet 
her buoyancy of spirits was so great that no depression was 
produced. On the contrary, it added to her cheerfulness, 
and was made the foundation, as was everything else, of 
mirth. 

" These alternations from one state to another continued 
at intervals of varying length for fifteen or sixteen years, but 
finally ceased when she attained the age of thirty-five or 
thirty-six, leaving her permanently in her second state. In 
this she remained without change for the last quarter of a 
century of her life, 

" The change from a gay, hysterical, mischievous woman, 
fond of jests and subject to absurd beliefs or delusive con- 
victions, to one retaining the joyousness and love of society, 
but sobered down to levels of practical usefulness, was 
gradual. The most of the twenty- five years which followed 
she was as different from her melancholy, morbid self as 
from the hilarious condition of the early years of her second 
state. Some of her family spoke of it as her third state. 
She is described as becoming rational, industrious, and very 
cheerful, yet reasonably serious ; possessed of a well-balanced 
temperament, and not having the slightest indication of an 
injured or disturbed mind. For some years she taught 
school, and in that capacity was both useful and acceptable, 
being a general favorite with old and young. 

" During these last twenty-five years she lived in the 
same house with the Rev. Dr. John V. Reynolds, her nephew, 
part of that time keeping house for him, showing a sound 
judgment and a thorough acquaintance with the duties of her 
position. 

" Dr. Reynolds, who is still living in Meadville," says 



MOLLIE FANCHER 407 

Dr. Mitchell, " and who has most kindly placed the facts at 
my disposal, states in his letter to me of January 4, 1888, 
that at a later period of her life she said she did sometimes 
seem to have a dim, dreamy idea of a shadowy past, which 
she could not fully grasp, and could not be certain whether 
it originated in a partially restored memory or in the state- 
ments of the events by others during her abnormal state. 

"Miss Reynolds died in January, 1854, at the age of 
sixty one. On the morning of the day of her death she rose 
in her usual health, ate her breakfast, and superintended 
household duties. While thus employed she suddenly raised 
her hands to her head and exclaimed : ' Oh, I wonder what 
is the matter with my head ! ' and immediately fell to the 
floor. When carried to a sofa she gasped once or twice and 
died." 



The case of Mollie Fancher is generally well known — a 
Brooklyn woman who since 1864 has been an invalid. She 
has passed from personality to personality — sometimes these 
separate personalities have lasted for years. In one she for- 
gets her previous existence. At one time she awoke from a 
personality and forgot wholly her life of the previous nine 
years. She had become expert in embroidering, but now for- 
got that she ever knew, and began to live her earlier life over 
again. She exhibited from time to time many distinct char- 
acters known by her friends by distinct names — "Sunbeam," 
was the name for her normal condition. Other characters 
were named "Ruby," "Pearl," "Rosebud." 

Dr. Morton Prince, of Paris, gives an account of a re- 
markable case that came under his treatment, that of Miss 
Beauchamp. This woman, when in her normal self, could 
digest little or nothing. When she was brought to Dr. Mor- 
ton she was starving to death, and was but a wreck. Even 
water gave her distress, and was expelled from her stomach. 
The doctor, to save her life, finally hypnotized her. This 
developed a different personality, with a sound stomach, and 
she began quickly to gain strength. After several days the 
doctor restored her to her natural condition. Immediately 






408 CHRIST CASTING OUT DEVILS 

all of the old symptoms revived in full force, she again began 
to starve. After repeated attempts the doctor was compelled 
to leave her in charge of another self instead of her normal 
self. This self in turn gave way of its own accord to a third, 
and the last two would alternate. A curious phase was that 
one of the personalities knew and greatly disliked the other. 

So many cases of secondary personality have now been 
investigated and classified by doctors and psychological ex- 
perts as to give it well-nigh the standing of a recognized sci- 
entific fact. It is likely that many a man and woman thinks 
himself or herself a Spiritualist medium, who is simply a vic- 
tim of the disease of "secondary personality." 

Then are we to conclude that, if fraud is eliminated, 
secondary personality will explain all of what are known in 
Spiritualistic circles as " materializations," " etherealizations," 
"transfigurations," "impersonations," and "obsessions"? 

When Christ cast out evil spirits from persons, what did 
He do? Did He simply restore these diseased persons to 
their sane selves by dispelling the hallucination of secondary 
personalities? Were the spirits who had usurped the organ- 
isms of the victims outside individualities ? Christ certainly 
treated the spirits as outside intelligences. He would talk 
to them and they to Him. It would be hard to account for 
the action of the herd of swine on the theory of secondary 
personalities. 

Let us see how far this theory will apply to actual cases. 

Case I. — The Celebrated "Watseka Wonder."' — 
This marvelous case Dr. Hodgson, who gave it much personal 
attention, thinks goes beyond any explanation based on the 
theory of secondary personality; he thinks it is to be ex- 
plained by spirits. The case was also verified in all of its 
I - details by Colonel J. C. Bundy, editor of The Religio-Philo- 
I sophical Journal, of Chicago, who is spoken of by Frederic 

Myers as "well known as a skilful and scrupulously honest 
\ investigator " of Spiritistic phenomena. Colonel Bundy says 

• Frederic Myers, " Human Personality," vol. i,, pp. 361-368. 



%. 



"WATSEKA WONDER" 409 

that he and Dr. Stevens " took great pains " to obtain full 
corroboration of the " astounding facts from unimpeachable 
and competent witnesses. " 

Rancy Vennum, the "Wonder," was a girl about fourteen 
years of age, living in 1878 at Watseka, Ind. In the same 
town had died in 1865, thirteen years before, a girl by the 
name of Mary Ro£f . Mary died about a year after Rancy's 
birth. Of course the girls never knew each other. Rancy's 
parents were not Spiritualists, and, up to this time, Rancy 
had always been in good health. Her troubles began with 
trances in which she said she visited heaven and angels. She 
heard voices at night calling her. 

Her experiences at this time seemed to be those of an 
insane person. She became sullen and disagreeable and 
the friends thought of sending her to an asylum. One day 
Rancy said that a spirit by the name of Mary Roff wanted 
" to come " to her, and the next day Mr. Vennum called at 
the office of Mr. Roff and informed him that his daughter 
claimed to be Mary Roff, and wanted to go home. He said : 
" She seems like a child real homesick, wanting to see her 
pa and ma and her brothers." 

After the supposed control by Mary Roff, Rancy became 
" mild, docile, polite, and timid, knowing none of the family, 
but constantly pleading to go home," and " only found con- 
tentment in going back to heaven, as she said, for short 
visits." 

" About a week after Mary took control of Rancy's body, 
Mrs. A. B. Roff and her daughter, Mrs. Minerva Alter, Mary's 
sister, hearing of the remarkable change, went to see the girl. 
As they came in sight, far down the street, Mary Rancy, look- 
ing out of the window, exclaimed exultingly, 'There come my 
ma and sister Nervie ! ' — the name by which Mary used to 
call Mrs. Alter in girlhood. As they came into the house 
she caught them around their necks, wept and cried for joy, 
and seemed so happy to meet them. From this time on she 
seemed more homesick than before. At times she seemed 
almost frantic to go home [to the Roff home]. 



4IO SAID, ANGELS SENT ME 

"On the nth day of February, 1878, they sent the girl 
to Mr. Roff's, where she met her 'pa and ma ' and each mem- 
ber of the family, with the most gratifying expressions of 
love and affection, by words and embraces. On being asked 
how long she would stay she said, 'The angels will let me 
stay till some time in May ' ; and she made it her home there 
till May 21, three months and ten days, a happy, contented 
daughter and sister in a borrowed body. 

" The girl now in her new home seemed perfectly happy 
and content, knowing every person and everything that Mary 
knew when in her original body, twelve to twenty-five years 
ago, recognizing and calling by name those who were friends 
and neighbors of the family from 1852 to 1865, when Mary 
died, calling attention to scores, yes, hundreds of incidents 
that transpired during her natural life. During all the period 
of her sojourn at Mr. Roff's she had no knowledge of, and 
did not recognize any of Mr. Vennum's family, their friends 
or neighbors, yet Mr. and Mrs. Vennum and their children 
visited her and Mr. Roff's people, she being introduced to 
them as to any strangers. After frequent visits, and hearing 
them often and favorably spoken of, she learned to love them 
as acquaintances, and visited them with Mrs. Roff three 
times. 

" One day she met an old friend and neighbor of Mr. 
Roff's, who was a widow when Mary was a girl at home. 
Some years since the lady married a Mr. Wagoner, with 
whom she yet lives. But when she met Mrs. Wagoner she 
clasped her around the neck and said: *0 Mary Lord, you 
look so very natural, and have changed the least of any one 
I have seen since I came back, ' Mrs. Lord was in some 
way related to the Vennum family and lived close by them, 
but Mary could call her only by the name by which she knew 
her fifteen years ago, and could not seem to realize that she 
was married. Mrs. Lord lived just across the street from 
Mr. Roff's for several years, prior and up to within a few 
months of Mary's death; both being members of the same 
Methodist church, they were very intimate. 

" Some days after Mary was settled in her new home, 
Mrs. Parker, who lived neighbor to the Roffs in Middleport 
in 1852, and next door to them in Watseka in i860, came in 
with her daughter-in-law, Nellie Parker. Mary immediately 
recognized both of the ladies, calling Mrs. Parker ' Auntie 



MANY TESTS OF IDENTITY 411 

Parker,' and the other ' Nellie,' as in the acquaintance of 
eighteen years ago. In conversation with Mrs. Parker Mary 
asked, * Do you remember how Nervie and I used to come 
to your house and sing.? ' Mrs. Parker says that was the 
first allusion made to that matter, nothing having been said 
by any one on that subject, and says that Mary and Minerva 
used to come to their house and sit and sing * Mary had a 
little lamb, ' etc. Mrs. Dr. Alter (Minerva) says she remem- 
bers it well. This was when Mr, Roff kept the post-office, 
and could not have been later than 1852, and twelve years 
before Lurancy was born. 

" One evening, in the latter part of March, Mr. Roff was 
sitting in the room waiting for tea, and reading the paper, 
Mary being out in the yard. He asked Mrs. Roff if she 
could find a certain velvet headdress that Mary used to wear 
the last year before she died. If so, to lay it on the stand 
and say nothing about it, to see if Mary would recognize it. 
Mrs. Roff readily found and laid it on the stand. The girl 
soon came in, and immediately exclaimed as she approached 
the stand, * Oh, there is my headdress I wore when my hair 
was short ! ' She then asked, ' Ma, where is my box of 
letters ? Have you got them yet ? ' Mrs. Roff replied, 
' Yes, Mary, I have some of them.' She at once got the box 
with many letters in it. As Mary began to examine them 
she said : * Oh, ma, here is a collar I tatted ! Ma, why did 
you not show to me my letters and things before } ' The 
collar had been preserved among the relics of the lamented 
child as one of the beautiful things her fingers had wrought 
before Lurancy was born ; and so Mary continually recog- 
nized every little thing and remembered every little incident 
of her girlhood. 

" It will be remembered that the family moved to Texas 
in 1857. Mr. Roff asked Mary if she remembered moving 
to Texas or anything about it. ' Yes, pa, and I remember 
crossing Red River and of seeing a great many Indians, and 
I remember Mrs. Reeder's girls, who were in our company.' 
And thus she from time to time made first mention of things 
that transpired thirteen to twenty-five years ago." 

Scores of tests were made like those just mentioned, 
which seemed to establish as nearly as anything could estab- 
lish the identity of this spirit control. After three months 



412 DR. HODGSON SAYS "SPIRITS" 

and ten days' "sojourn in Rancy's body," Mary told her sup- 
posed parents that Rancy was coming back and that she must 
return " to the angels." When Rancy returned she had to 
be introduced anew to all of the new acquaintances that Mary 
had made, even to Mary's doctor and to the members of the 
Roff family. Her health was restored. She grew to woman- 
hood and afterward married. 

Dr. Hodgson, after having personally visited Watseka, and 
cross-examining many witnesses, concludes his thorough and 
critical review of this extraordinary case as follows : 

*' ' I have no doubt that the incidents occurred substan- 
tially as described in the narrative by Dr. Stevens, and in 
my view the only other interpretation of the case — besides 
the spiritistic — that seems at all plausible is that which has 
been put forward as the alternative to the spiritistic theory to 
account for the trance communications of Mrs. Piper and 
similar cases, viz., secondary personality with supernormal 
powers. It would be difficult to disprove this hypothesis in 
the case of the Watseka Wonder, owing to the comparative 
meagerness of the record and the probable abundance of 
" suggestion " in the environment, and any conclusion that we 
may reach would probably be determined largely by our con- 
victions concerning other cases. My personal opinion is that 
the " Watseka Wonder " case belongs in the main manifesta- 
tions to the spiritistic category. ' " 

In this strange Watseka case it will be observed that the 
person that claimed to be Mary Roff never appeared to any 
one at Watseka except through the body of Rancy. She 
never materialized in an independent body ; at any rate no 
one reported to have seen such a materialization. If this 
was a spirit, as Mr. Hodgson thinks, then it was a case of 
obsession. In Bible times good spirits and evil spirits seemed 
to have power to control earthly bodies. The " Spirit of 
the Lord " — that is, a messenger of God — often entered the 
prophets and spake through them. 

But is there good proof of a case in which there was a 
visible materialization other than that of some living mortal .'' 



CROOKES SEES MATERIALIZATIONS 413 

Case II. — Sir William Crookes's Experiments with 
Miss Cook. — While the startling psychic experiments by Mr. 
Crookes were made in 1871-74, and before the extensive in- 
vestigations by the S. P. R. into telepathy and other phases of 
psychology that bear on the subject, it must be borne in mind 
that altho Crookes is familiar with all of these later inves- 
tigations, he sees no reason whatever to change his mind as 
to the genuineness of the marvelous materialization and other 
psychic phenomena which he published, and still publishes, 
as having been witnessed by himself. 

I here give the entire description by Mr. Crookes^ of the 
materialization class of his experiments — these experiments 
having been made in the library-room of his residence under 
what he believed and still believes to have been strict test 
conditions : 

Sir William Crookes's First Letter: "It has been my en- 
deavor to keep as clear of controversy as possible, in writing 
or speaking about so inflammatory a topic as the phenomena 
called Spiritual. Except in very few cases, where the promi- 
nent position of my opponent would have caused my silence 
to be ascribed to other than the real motives, I have made 
no reply to the attacks and misrepresentations which my 
connection with this subject has entailed upon me, 

" The case is otherwise, however, when a few lines from 
me may perhaps assist in removing an unjust suspicion which 
is cast upon another. And when this other person is a 
woman— young, sensitive, and innocent — it becomes espe- 
cially a duty for me to give the weight of my testimony in 
favor of her whom I believe to be unjustly accused. 

" Among all the arguments brought forward on either side 
touching the phenomena of Miss Cook's mediumship, I see 
very few facts stated in such a way as to lead an unpreju- 
diced reader, provided he can trust the judgment and veracity 
of the narrator, to say, ' Here at last is absolute proof.' I 
see plenty of strong assertion, much unintentional exaggera- 
tion, endless conjecture and supposition, no little insinua- 
tion of fraud, and some amount of vulgar buffoonery ; but no 

1 Sir William Crookes's "Researches Into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritual- 
ism," pp. 41-50, 1903 edition. 



414 LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 

one has come forward with a positive assertion, based upon the 
evidence of his own senses, to the effect that when the form 
which calls itself ' Katie ' is visible in the room, the body of 
Miss Cook is either actually in the cabinet or is not there. 

" It appears to me that the whole question narrows itself 
into this small compass. Let either of the above alterna- 
tives be proved to be a fact, and all the other collateral ques- 
tions may be dismissed. But the proof must be absolute 
and not based upon inferential reasoning or assumed upon 
the supposed integrity of seals, knots, and sewing ; for I have 
reason to know that the power at work in these phenomena, 
like love, ' laughs at locksmiths.' 

" I was in hopes that some of those friends of Miss Cook 
who have attended her seances almost from the commence- 
ment, and who appear to have been highly favored in the 
tests they have received, would ere this have borne testi- 
mony in her favor. In default, however, of evidence from 
those who have followed these phenomena from their begin- 
ning nearly three years ago, let me, who have only been ad- 
mitted, as it were, at the eleventh hour, state a circumstance 
which came under my notice at a seance to which I was in- 
vited by the favor of Miss Cook, a few days after the dis- 
graceful occurrence which has given rise to this controversy. 

" The stance was held at the house of Mr, Luxmore, and 
the ' cabinet ' was a back drawing-room, separated from the 
front room in Vv^hich the company sat by a curtain. 

" The usual formality of searching the room and examin- 
ing the fastenings having been gone through. Miss Cook 
entered the cabinet. 

" After a little time the form Katie appeared at the side 
of the curtain, but soon retreated, saying her medium was 
not well, and could not be put into a sufficiently deep sleep 
to make it safe for her to be left. 

" I was sitting within a few feet of the curtain close be- 
hind which Miss Cook was sitting, and I could frequently 
hear her moan and sob, as if in pain. This uneasiness con- 
tinued at intervals nearly the whole duration of the seance, 
and once, when the foi'in of Katie zvas standing before me in 
the room, I distinctly heard a sobbhig, moaning sound, identi- 
cal with that zvhich Miss Cook had been making at intervals 
the tvhole ti'ine of the seance, come front behind the cttrtaiji 
zvhere the young lady was supposed to be sitting. 



STARTLINGLY LIFE-LIKE 



415 



" I admit that the figure was startlingly life-like and 
real, and, as far as I could see in the somewhat dim light, 
the features resembled those of Miss Cook ; but still the 
positive evidence of one of my own senses that the moan 
came from Miss Cook in the cabinet, while the figure was 
outside, is too strong to be upset by a mere inference to the 
contrary, however well supported. 

" Your readers, sir, know me, and will, I hope, believe 
that I will not come hastily to an opinion or ask them to 
agree with me on insufficient evidence. It is perhaps ex- 
pecting too much to think that the little incident I have men- 
tioned will have the same weight with them that it had with 
me. But this I do beg of them : let those who are inclined 
to judge Miss Cook harshly suspend their judgment until I 
bring forward positive evidence which I think will be suffi- 
cient to settle the question. 

" Miss Cook is now devoting herself exclusively to a series 
of private seances with me and one or two friends. The 
seances will probably extend over some months, and I am 
promised that every desirable test shall be given to me. 
These seances have not been going on many weeks, but 
enough has taken place to thoroughly convince me of the 
perfect truth and honesty of Miss Cook and to give me every 
reason to expect that the promises so freely made to me by 
Katie will be kept. 

" All I now ask is that your readers will not hastily assume 
that everything which is pjimd facie suspicious necessarily 
implies deception, and that they will suspend their judgment 
until they hear from me again on this subject," etc. 

Sir William Crookes's Second Letter : " In a letter which 
I wrote to this journal early in February last, speaking of the 
phenomena of spirit-forms which have appeared through Miss 
Cook's mediumship, I said: ' Let those who are inclined to 
judge Miss Cook harshly suspend their judgment until I 
bring forward positive evidence which I think will be suf- 
ficient to settle the question. Miss Cook is now devoting 
herself exclusively to a series of private seances with me and 
one or two friends. . . . Enough has taken place to thorough- 
ly convince me of the perfect truth and honesty of Miss 
Cook, and to give me every reason to expect that the promises 
so freely made to me by Katie will be kept.' 

" In that letter I described an incident which to my mind 



4i6 CROOKES SATISFIED 

went very far toward convincing me that Katie and Miss 
Cook were two separate material beings. When Katie was 
outside the cabinet, standing before me, I heard a moaning 
noise from Miss Cook in the cabinet. I am happy to say that 
I have at last obtained the ' absolute proof ' to which I re- 
ferred in the above quoted letter. 

" I will, for the present, pass over most of tUe tests which 
Katie has given me on the many occasions when Miss Cook 
has favored me with seances at this house, and will only 
describe one or two which I have recently had. I have for 
some time past been experimenting with a phosphorus lamp, 
consisting of a six-ounce or eight-ounce bottle, containing a 
little phosphorized oil, and tightly corked. I have had reason 
to hope that by the light of this lamp some of the mysterious 
phenomena of the cabinet might be rendered visible, and 
Katie has also expressed herself hopefully as to the same 
result. 

" On March 1 2, during a seance here, after Katie had 
been walking among us and talking for some time, she re- 
treated behind the curtain which separated my laboratory, 
where the company was sitting, from my library which did 
temporary duty as a cabinet. In a minute she came to the 
curtain and called me to her, saying : ' Come into the room 
and lift my medium's head up; she has slipped down.' 
Katie was then standing before me, clothed in her usual 
white robes and turban headdress. I immediately walked 
into the library up to Miss Cook, Katie stepping aside to 
allow me to pass. I found Miss Cook had slipped partially 
off the sofa, and her head was hanging in a very awkward 
position. I lifted her on to the sofa, and in so doing had 
satisfactory evidence, in spite of the darkness, that Miss 
Cook was not attired in the ' Katie ' costume, but had on her 
ordinary black velvet dress, and was in a deep trance. Not 
more than three seconds elapsed between my seeing the 
white-robed Katie standing before me and my raising Miss 
Cook on to the sofa from the position into which she had 
fallen. 

" On returning to my post of observation by the curtain, 
Katie again appeared, and said she thought she should be 
able to show herself and her medium to me at the same time. 
The gas was then turned out, and she asked for my phos- 
phorus lamp. After exhibiting herself by it for some sec- 



HASTY REASONING DANGEROUS 417 

onds, she handed it back to me, saying, ' Now come in and 
see my medium.' I closely followed her into the library, 
and by the light of my lamp saw Miss Cook lying on the 
sofa just as I had left her. I looked round for Katie, but 
she had disappeared. I called her, but there was no answer. 

" On resuming my place Katie soon reappeared and told 
me that she had been standing close to Miss Cook all the 
time. She then asked if she might try an experiment her- 
self, and taking the phosphorus lamp from me she passed be- 
hind the curtain, asking me not to look in for the present. 
In a few minutes she handed the lamp back to me, saying 
she could not succeed, as she had used up all the power, but 
would try again another time. My eldest son, a lad of four- 
teen, who was sitting opposite me, in such a position that he 
could see behind the curtain, tells me he distinctly saw the 
phosphorus lamp apparently floating about in space over Miss 
Cook, illuminating her as she lay motionless on the sofa, but 
he could not see any one holding the lamp. 

" I pass on to a seance held last night at Hackney. Katie 
never appeared to greater perfection, and for nearly two hours 
she walked about the room, conversing familiarly with those 
present. On several occasions she took my arm when walk- 
ing, and the impression conveyed to my mind that it was a 
living woman by my side, instead of a visitor from the other 
world, was so strong that the temptation to repeat a recent 
celebrated experiment became almost irresistible. Feeling, 
however, that if I had not a spirit, I had at all events a lady 
close to me, I asked her permission to clasp her in my arms, 
so as to be able to verify the interesting observations which 
a bold experimentalist has recently somewhat verbosely 
recorded. Permission was graciously given, and I accord- 
ingly did — well, as any gentleman would do under the circum- 
stances. Mr. Volckman will be pleased to know that I can 
corroborate his statement that the * ghost ' (not ' struggling,' 
however) was as material a being as Miss Cook herself. But 
the sequel shows how wrong it is for an experimentalist, how- 
ever accurate his observations may be, to venture to draw 
an important conclusion from an insufficient amount of evi- 
dence. 

"Katie now said she thought she should be able this 
time to show herself and Miss Cook together. I was to turn 
the gas out and then come with my phosphorus lamp into 
27 



4i8 SAW SPIRIT AND MEDIUM 

the room now used as a cabinet. This I did, having pre- 
viously asked a friend who was skilful at shorthand to take 
down any statement I might make when in the cabinet, know- 
ing the importance attaching to first impressions, and not 
wishing to leave more to memory than necessary. His notes 
are now before me. 

" I went cautiously into the room, it being dark, and 
felt about for Miss Cook. I found her crouching on the 
floor. Kneeling down, I let air enter the lamp, and by its 
light I saw the young lady dressed in black velvet, as she 
had been in the early part of the evening, and to all appear- 
ance perfectly senseless ; she did not move when I took her 
hand and held the light quite close to her face, but con- 
tinued quietly breathing. Raising the lamp, I looked around 
and saw Katie standing close behind Miss Cook. She was 
robed in flowing white drapery as we had seen her previously 
during the stance. Holding one of Miss Cook's hands in 
mine, and still kneeling, I passed the lamp up and down so as 
to illuminate Katie's whole figure and satisfy myself thor- 
oughly that I was really looking at the veritable Katie whom 
I had clasped in my arms a few minutes before, and not at 
the phantasm of a disordered brain. She did not speak, but 
moved her head and smiled in recognition. Three separate 
times did I carefully examine Miss Cook crouching before 
me, to be sure that the hand I held was that of a living 
woman, and three separate times did I turn the lamp to 
Katie and examine her with steadfast scrutiny until I had no 
doubt whatever of her objective reality. At last Miss Cook 
moved slightly, and Katie instantly motioned me to go 
away. I went to another part of the cabinet and then ceased 
to see Katie, but did not leave the room till Miss Cook woke 
up and two of the visitors cam.e in with a light. 

" Before concluding this article I wish to give some of the 
points of difference which I have observed between Miss 
Cook and Katie. Katie's height varies ; in my house I have 
seen her six inches taller than Miss Cook. Last night, with 
bare feet and not * tip-toeing,' she was four and a half inches 
taller than Miss Cook. Katie's neck was bare last night ; 
the skin was perfectly smooth both to touch and sight, while 
on Miss Cook's neck is a large blister, which under similar 
circumstances is distinctly visible and rough to the touch. 
Katie's ears are unpierced, while Miss Cook habitually 



SEANCES AT CROOKES'S HOME 419 

wears earrings. Katie's complexion is very fair, while that 
of Miss Cook is very dark. Katie's fingers are much longer 
than Miss Cook's, and her face is also larger. In manners 
and ways of expression there are also many decided differ- 
ences. 

" Miss Cook's health is not good enough to allow of her 
giving more of these test stances for the next few weeks, and 
we have, therefore, strongly advised her to take an entire rest 
before recommencing the experimental campaign which I 
have sketched out for her, and the results of which I hope to 
be able to record at some future day." 

Sir William Crookes's Third Letter: "Having taken a 
very prominent part of late at Miss Cook's seances, and 
having been very successful in taking numerous photographs 
of Katie King by the aid of the electric light, I have thought 
that the publication of a few of the details would be of inter- 
est to the readers of The Spiritualist. 

" During the week before Katie took her departure she 
gave stances at my house almost nightly, to enable me to 
photograph her by artificial light. Five complete sets of 
photographic apparatus were accordingly fitted up for the 
purpose, consisting of five cameras, one of the whole-plate 
size, one half-plate, one quarter-plate, and two binocular 
stereoscopic cameras, which were all brought to bear upon 
Katie at the same time on each occasion on which she stood 
for her portrait. Five sensitizing and fixing baths were used, 
and plenty of plates were cleaned ready for use in advance, 
so that there might be no hitch or delay during the photo- 
graphing operations, which were performed by myself, aided 
by one assistant. 

" My library was used as a dark cabinet. It has folding- 
doors opening into the laboratory; one of these doors was 
taken off its hinges and a curtain suspended in its place, to 
enable Katie to pass in and out easily. Those of our friends 
who were present were seated in the laboratory facing the 
curtain, and the cameras were placed a little behind them, 
ready to photograph Katie when she came outside, and to 
photograph anything also inside the cabinet, whenever the 
curtain was withdrawn for the purpose. Each evening there 
were three or four exposures of plates in the five cameras, 
giving at least fifteen separate pictures at each seance ; some 
of these were spoiled in the developing and some in regula- 



420 CROOKES PHOTOGRAPHS SPIRIT 

ting the amount of light. Altogether I have forty-four nega- 
tives, some inferior, some indifferent, and some excellent. 

" Katie instructed all the sitters but myself to keep their 
seats and to keep conditions, but for some time past she has 
given me permission to do what I liked — to touch her and to 
enter and leave the cabinet almost whenever I pleased. I 
have frequently followed her into the cabinet, and have 
sometimes seen her and her medium together, but most gen- 
erally I have found nobody but the entranced medium lying 
on the floor, Katie and her white robes having instantane- 
ously disappeared. 

" During the last six months Miss Cook has been a fre- 
quent visitor at my house, remaining sometimes a week at a 
time. She brings nothing with her but a little hand-bag, 
not locked ; during the day she is constantly in the presence 
of Mrs. Crookes, myself, or some other member of my fam- 
ily, and, not sleeping by herself, there is absolutely no oppor- 
tunity for any preparation even of a less elaborate character 
than would be required for enacting Katie King, I prepare 
and arrange my library myself as the dark cabinet, and usu- 
ally, after Miss Cook has been dining and conversing with 
us, and scarcely out of our sight for a minute, she walks 
direct into the cabinet, and I, at her request, lock its second 
door and keep possession of the key all through the seance ; 
the gas is then turned out, and Miss Cook is left in darkness. 

" On entering the cabinet Miss Cook lies down upon the 
floor, with her head on a pillow, and is soon entranced. Dur- 
ing the photographic seance Katie muffled her medium's 
head up in a shawl to prevent the light falling upon her face. 
I frequently drew the curtain on one side when Katie was 
standing near, and it was a common thing for the seven or 
eight of us in the laboratory to see Miss Cook and Katie at 
the same time, under the full blaze of the electric light. We 
did not on these occasions actually see the face of the me- 
dium because of the shawl, but we saw her hands and feet ; 
we saw her move uneasily under the influence of the intense 
light, and we heard her moan occasionally. I have one photo- 
graph of the two together, but Katie is seated in front of 
Miss Cook's head. 

" During the time I have taken an active part in these 
seances Katie's confidence in me gradually grew, until she 
refused to give a stance unless I took charge of the arrange- 



SPIRIT AND MEDIUM DIFFEF 421 

raents. She said she always wanted me to keep close to her 
and near the cabinet, and I found that after this confidence 
was established, and she was satisfied I would not break any 
promise I might make to her, the phenomena increased 
greatly in power, and tests were freely given that would have 
been unobtainable had I approached the subject in another 
manner. She often consulted me about persons present at 
the stances, and where they should be placed, for of late she 
had become very nervous, in consequence of certain ill-advised 
suggestions that force should be employed as an adjunct to 
more scientific modes of research. 

" One of the most interesting of the pictures is one in 
which I am standing by the side of Katie ; she has her bare 
foot upon a particular part of the floor. Afterward I dressed 
Miss Cook like Katie, placed her and myself in exactly the 
same position, and we were photographed by the same came- 
ras, placed exactly as in the other experiment, and illumi- 
nated by the same light. When these two pictures are 
placed over each other, the two photographs of myself coin- 
cide exactly as regards stature, etc., but Katie is half a head 
taller than Miss Cook, and looks a big woman in comparison 
with her. In the breadth of her face, in many of the pic- 
tures, she differs essentially in size from her medium, and 
the photographs show several other points of difference. 

" But photography is as inadequate to depict the perfect 
beauty of Katie's face as words are powerless to describe 
her charms of manner. Photography may, indeed, give a 
map of her countenance ; but how can it reproduce the bril- 
liant purity of her complexion, or the ever-varying expression 
of her most mobile features, now overshadowed with sadness 
when relating some of the bitter experiences of her past life, 
now smiling with all the innocence of happy girlhood when 
she had collected my children round her, and was amusing 
them by recounting anecdotes of her adventures in India ? 

" ' Round her she made an atmosphere of life ; 

The very air seemed lighter from her eye 
They were so soft and beautiful, and rife 

With all we can imagine of the skies ; 
Her overpowering presence made you fee! 
It would not be idolatry to kneel.' 

" Having seen so much of Katie lately, when she has 
been illuminated by the electric light, I am enabled to add to 



422 CROOKES FINDS PULSE AND HEART 

the points of difference between her and her medium vs^hich 
I mentioned in a former article. I have the most absolute 
certainty that Miss Cook and Katie are two separate indi- 
viduals so far as their bodies are concerned. Several little 
marks on Miss Cook's face are absent on Katie's. Miss 
Cook's hafr is so dark a brown as almost to appear black ; 
a lock of Katie's which is now before me, and which she 
allowed me to cut from her luxuriant tresses, having first 
traced it up to the scalp and satisfied myself that it actually 
grew there, is a rich golden auburn. 

" One evening I timed Katie's pulse. It beat steadily 
at 75, whilst Miss Cook's pulse, a little time after, was going 
at its usual rate of 90. On applying my ear to Katie's chest 
I could hear a heart beating rhythmically inside, and pulsating 
even more steadily than did Miss Cook's heart when she al- 
lowed me to try a similar experiment after the seance. Tested 
in the same way Katie's lungs were found to be sounder than 
her medium's, for at the time I tried my experiment Miss 
Cook was under medical treatment for a severe cough. 

" Your readers may be interested in having Mrs. Ross 
Church's, and your own accounts of the last appearance of 
Katie, supplemented by my own narrative, as far as I can 
publish it. When the time came for Katie to take her fare- 
well I asked that she would let me see the last of her. Ac- 
cordingly when she had called each of the company up to her 
and had spoken to them a few words in private, she gave 
some general directions for the future guidance and protec- 
tion of Miss Cook. From these, which were taken down in 
shorthand, I quote the following : * Mr. Crookes has done very 
well throughout, and I leave Florrie with the greatest confi- 
dence in his hands, feeling perfectly sure he will not abuse 
the trust I place in him. He can act in any emergency bet- 
ter than I can myself, for he has more strength.' Having 
concluded her directions, Katie invited me into the cabinet 
with her, and allowed me to remain there to the end. 

"After closing the curtain she conversed with me for 
some time, and then walked across the room to where Miss 
Cook was lying senseless on the floor. Stooping over her, 
Katie touched her, and said, * Wake up, Florrie, wake up. I 
must leave you now. ' Miss Cook then woke and tearfully 
entreated Katie to stay a little time longer. 'My dear, I 
can't ; my work is done. God bless you,' Katie replied, and 



CROOKES'S FIRM BELIEF 423 

then continued speaking to Miss Cook. For several minutes 
the two were conversing with each other, till at last Miss 
Cook's tears prevented her speaking. Following Katie's in- 
structions I then came forward to support Miss Cook, who 
was falling on to the floor, sobbing hysterically. I looked 
round, but the white-robed Katie had gone. As soon as 
Miss Cook was sufficiently calmed, a light was procured and 
I led her out of the cabinet. 

" The almost daily stances with which Miss Cook has 
lately favored me have proved a severe tax upon her strength, 
and I wish to make the most public acknowledgment of the 
obligations I am under to her for her readiness to assist me 
in my experiments. Every test that I have proposed she has 
at once agreed to submit to with the utmost willingness; 
she is open and straightforward in speech, and I have never 
seen anything approaching the slightest symptom of a wish 
to deceive. Indeed, I do not believe she could carry on a 
deception if she were to try, and if she did she would cer- 
tainly be found out very quickly, for such a line of action is 
altogether foreign to her nature. And to imagine that an 
innocent school-girl of fifteen should be able to conceive and 
then successfully carry out for three years so gigantic an im- 
posture as this, and in that time should submit to any test 
which might be imposed upon her, should bear the strictest 
scrutiny, should be willing to be searched at any time, either 
before or after a stance, and should meet with even better 
success in my own house than at that of her parents, know- 
ing that she visited me with the express object of submit- 
ting to strict scientific tests, — to imagine, I say, the Katie 
King of the last three years to be the result of imposture 
does more violence to one's reason and common sense than 
to believe her to be what she herself affirms. 

" It would not be right for me to conclude this article 
without also thanking Mr. and Mrs. Cook for the great facili- 
ties they have given me to carry on these observations and 
experiments." 

The reader should read through the second time these 
descriptions by Sir William Crookes, remembering that : 

I. Crookes is a trained physicist, skilled in investigations, 
and of world-wide reputation, and that when he began his in- 
vestigation he was not a Spiritualist. 



424 OTHER TYPICAL CASES 

2. That these investigations were made in his own house, 
and in his own library to which he kept the key, and in which 
library the medium was not permitted except during the 
investigations. 

3. That Sir William Crookes says that he believes as 
firmly to-day as then in the conclusions he reached. 

Case III. — I requested a few months ago a business ac- 
quaintance of mine who lives in another city to make a care- 
ful investigation of materialization phenomena that were 
taking place in his city. He is an experienced investigator. 
The following is his description of one of the many seances 
he attended : 

" The medium, and her husband, who also is a medium, 
myself and four other acquaintances of mine, whose names 
and addresses I can give you if you desire, formed a company 
in a private residence where Spiritualistic seances had not 
previously been held. We repaired to an upstairs room 
selected by ourselves, and took a spread from off of the lounge 
and hung it across an ordinary closet-door opening; this con- 
stituted the cabinet. We then wrapped a tinted silk hand- 
kerchief around an electric light globe and the other lights 
were turned out. The door leading to the room was locked. 
There was no opening whatever into the closet other than 
the one which opened into the room in which we were sit- 
ting. Had the door from the room been opened at any time 
it would have let in a flood of light from the hall. Neither 
of the two mediums went into a trance, but both remained 
walking about the room in which we were sitting and engaged 
in general conversation with the company. Each one present 
could at any time see the face of everybody else in the room. 

" The spirit friends materialized and walked forth from 
the closet and shook hands with their friends. 

" I sat at one end of the circle directly facing the incan- 
descent light that was wrapped about with the handkerchief 
in such a position that the spirit friends, when walking out 
to myself and other members of the circle, had to come be- 
tween me and the light. There were as many as th^ee mate- 
rialized forms at one instant out in the room ; these were 
escorted about by the two mediums. We could plainly see 



MY BROTHER'S EXPERIMENT 



425 



the full outlines of both mediums and the spirit friends. On 
this occasion only one of the materializations took place out- 
side of the cabinet ; this was a young lady who dematerial- 
ized about six feet from and directly in front of the cabinet. 
"July 8, 1903. " 

At my request my brother went to this city and in com- 
pany with the writer of the above letter attended several test 
seances. Altho close watch was maintained for deception, 
they discovered none. My brother sealed the windows, and 
made every condition that he could think of to exclude fraud. 
His experiences were as remarkable as those given above. 
These are only examples of many hundreds of well attested 
cases. Of course, there are many frauds, but those who best 
know the frauds are strongest in their convictions that there 
is a large unexplained remainder. 

Case IV. — I arranged for a medium to hold a sitting at 
the residence of my business associate, Mr. A, W. Wagnalls, 
at which there had been held no Spiritualist circle previous 
to this date. The family of Mr. W. are exceedingly critical, 
and very skeptical of Spiritualistic phenomena, and are non- 
Spiritualists. They have had no little experience in the inves- 
tigation of fraud after this sort and were keenly alive to the 
possibilities of deception. Their home is on the sixth floor of a 
large apartment house in New York. We used two rooms for 
the sitting, both small, the one opening into the other. The 
smaller one served for a cabinet. This cabinet room had no 
opening except into the larger room ; the windows to this 
room opened through the rear wall at an unbroken height of 
six stories. The circle consisted of twelve persons, all ac- 
quaintances of Mr. and Mrs. Wagnalls and myself. We sat 
in a half-circle around the room. The arrangement precluded 
all possibility of confederates. The medium came to the 
house only a short time before the opening of the stance. 

The problem was reduced to its simplest proportions. 
What appeared was either the work of the medium or the work 
of intelligences outside of the flesh. I took my position second 



426 AT A FRIEND'S HOUSE 

to the door that led into the cabinet-room. Mr. Wagnalls 
turned up and down the gas-burner in the chandelier as dir- 
ected from the cabinet. At all times the light was sufficient to 
enable me to see everybody in the room, and it was impossible 
for any one to have left his seat without immediate detection. 

During the sitting many forms came from the cabinet ; 
one, a little girl, came to me and spoke and then crossed the 
room to Mrs. W. The medium is quite a heavy woman, 
weighing over two hundred pounds. I can not think of any 
possible delusion or trick that will satisfactorily account for 
these appearances. Men and women came from the cabinet, 
two at one time. There were as many as twelve distinct 
voices from what appeared to be spirit-forms during the 
evening. Some voices were heavy male voices, others were 
female, and some children voices. There is a possibility, of 
course, of any kind of a voice being imitated. 

I have had much experience with materialization seances, 
and think that I know pretty thoroughly the fraudulent 
brand. I have studied the methods adopted by nearly all of 
the exposed mediums in the different large cities during the 
last twenty years. There was nothing in all of these expo- 
sures sufficient to account for what took place during the 
evening I am describing. The " phenomena " produced by 
conjurers like Hermann and Kellar I have often witnessed. 
They help nothing whatever in solving the real problem 
of materialization as described by Crookes and as here de- 
scribed as taking place at the residence of Mr. W. The 
tricks of conjurers are performed with elaborate machinery; 
but here was no chance for machinery. How " it was done " 
at this circle at Mr. W.'s I do not pretend to say. I simply 
say that here at a private house, at times within three feet of 
my eyes, without any chance for machinery and without con- 
federates, marvels took place as wonderful as I ever saw on 
conjurer's stage at a distance from me and with elaborate 
machinery — and all this took place with a woman as the actor, 
who is without reputation as a conjurer. 



A PHANTOM HAND 427 

Case V. — The appearance of forms in the presence of 
Professor Zollner of the Leipsic University. 

Appearance of a Hand and a Ltiminous Object 

Exhibition of Force ^ Lights,^ etc. — "I mention here a sit- 
ting with Slade which took place at five o'clock in the after- 
noon of the 15th December, 1877, in the usual sitting- 
room of the house of my friend O. von Hoffmann, whose 
wife was present. It was the only one in which the room 
was partially darkened, to try whether in Slade's pres- 
ence, as in that of the young lady of fifteen (Miss Cook), a 
human form, or at least a 'phantom form,' as Mr. Crookes 
described it in his book, under the heading ' Phantom 
Forms and Faces, ' would be evolved. In order to impro- 
vise a cabinet, a string was drawn obliquely across the part 
of the room opposite my usual place, at about two meters " 
above the floor, and of a breadth corresponding to that of the 
edge of the table, a dark-green curtain being fixed to it. 
Slade sat at his usual place, at his right Frau von Hoffmann, 
I next, and Herr von Hoffmann at ray right. We had already 
laid our hands, linked together, on the table, when I remarked 
it was a pity we had forgotten to place a small hand-bell on 
the table. At the same moment it began ringing in the cor- 
ner of the room at my right front, at least two meters from 
the middle of the table ; and the room being faintly illumi- 
nated by gaslight from the street, we saw a small hand- bell 
slowly hover down from the stand on which it stood, lay it- 
self down on the carpet of the floor, and move itself forward 
by jerks, till it got under our table. Here immediately it 
began ringing in the most lively manner, and while we kept 
our hands joined together as above described on the table, a 
hand suddenly appeared through an opening in the middle of 
the curtain with the bell, which it placed on the middle of 
the table in front of us. I hereupon expressed the wish to 
be allowed to hold that hand once firmly in my own. I had 
scarcely said this, when the hand appeared again out of the 
opening, and now, while with the palm of my left hand I 
covered and held fast both Slade's hands, with my right I 
seized the hand protruded from the opening, and thus shook 

> "Transcendental Physics," pp. 183-185. 
' About six and one-half feet.— Tr. 



428 A TUG OF WAR 

hands with a friend from the other world. It had quite a 
living warmth, and returned my pressure heartily. After 
letting go the hand, I reached it a slate, and challenged it to 
a small proof of strength; I would pull to one side, and it 
should pull to the other, and we would see which of us kept 
the slate. This was done, and in the frequent give-and-take, 
I had quite the feeling of an elastic tug, as tho a man had 
hold of the slate at the other side. By a strong wrench I 
got possession of it. I again remark that during all these 
proceedings Mr. Slade sat quietly before us, both his hands 
being covered and detained by my left hand, and by the 
hands of the two others. 

" I may here point out that such a pull on one side by a 
human hand or other solid body, as a slate, would be a viola- 
tion of the principle of the equality of action and reaction 
if no material object undergoing the equal, but resisted, pull 
were to be found in three-dimensional space. But no such 
object being to be found in the space ordinarily perceivable 
by us {in tmserem geivdJmlichen Anschaumigsrajmi) it must 
occupy a position in absolute space, falling in the next higher 
region of space. Only in this manner can the apparent con- 
tradiction, here introduced, of a fundamental law of the 
interaction of bodies be satisfactorily solved for our under- 
standing. 

" While I was still busied with the above observations 
and experiments, there suddenly emerged from above the 
upper border of the curtain a half-circular mass gleaming in 
phosphorescent light, of the size of a human head. It moved 
slowly to and fro at the same height from one side of the 
curtain to the other frequently ; and gave us all the impres- 
sion of appertaining to a luminous form close behind the cur- 
tain. Approaching that side of the curtain at which Slade 
sat, this luminous form became visible in its whole extent. 
Slade drew back, evidently alarmed, whereat we laughed, and 
the form immediately hovered back behind the curtain, and 
with the same speed moved to the other side, here also emerg- 
ing up to the middle. We could not distinguish features or 
limbs. In brightness and color the phosphorescent light re- 
sembled that observed in the so-called ' after-shining " Geiss- 
ler's tubes. I much regretted that I had not at hand ray 
pocket spectroscope, in order more closely to examine the 
nature of the emitted light." 



PUZZLING HANDPRINTS 429 

If these phenomena actually occurred in a room in which 
Slade had not arranged some machinery, and Slade kept his 
seat at the table, as Zollner says he did, these appearances 
can not be accounted for by any force or law as yet recognized 
by science. 

The questions are : 

Did Slade get behind the curtain or reach behind it with 
some instrument to which he had attached luminous objects 
and the hand that gave the hard pull ? 

Was it Slade's hand that gave this hard pull, Zollner be- 
lieving all the time that he had Slade's hand covered with 
his own ? 

The supposition seems laughably absurd when we remem- 
ber that Zollner was one of the most critical scientists of his 
time, and yet if it were not Slade's hand, whose was it? 
Did this exhibition of phenomena stand alone, it would be 
comparatively easy to believe that in the semi-darkness Slade 
somehow outwitted these people. But with every additional 
phenomenon the difficulty increases at a rapid ratio. 

Prints of " Spirit- Hand'' in a Bowl of MeaP 

The following interesting result was obtained by Professor 
Zollner : 

"As almost regularly at all the sittings (while Slade's 
hands rested on the table, visible to all present, and his feet, 
in the sideways position frequently mentioned, could be at 
any time observed) we felt the touch of hands under the table, 
and, as above remarked, had even seen these transiently 
under the same conditions, I desired to institute an experi- 
ment by which a convincing proof of the existence of these 
hands could be afforded. I therefore proposed to Mr. Slade 
to have placed under the table a flat porcelain vase filled up 
to the edge with wheat flour, and that he should then request 
his ' spirits ' to put their hands in the flour before touching 
us. In this manner the visible traces of the touching must 
be shown on our clothes after the contact, and at the same 

1 "Transcendental Physics," pp. 63-64. 



430 EXPERIMENTS STRICTLY SCIENTIFIC 

time Slade's hands and feet could be examined for remains 
of flour adhering to them. Slade declared himself ready at 
once for the proposed test. I fetched a large porcelain bowl 
of about one foot diameter and two inches deep, filled it 
evenly to the brim with flour, and placed it under the table. 
We did not trouble ourselves at first about the eventual 
success of this experiment, but continued for over five min- 
utes the magnetic experiments, Slade's hands being all the 
time visible upon the table ; when suddenly I felt my right 
knee powerfully grasped and pressed by a large hand under 
the table for about a second, and at the same moment, as I 
mentioned this to the others and was about to get up, the 
bowl of meal was pushed forward from its place under the 
table about four feet on the floor. Upon my trousers I had 
the impression in meal of a large strong hand, and on the 
meal surface of the bowl were indented the thumb and four 
fingers with all the niceties of structure and folds of the skin 
impressed. An immediate examination of Slade's hands and 
feet showed not the slightest traces of flour, and the compari- 
son of his own hand with the impression on the meal proved 
the latter to be considerably larger. The impression is still 
in my possession, altho through frequent shakings the deli- 
cacy of the lines is becoming gradually obliterated by the 
falling together of the particles of meal." 

Permanent Impressions of a Foot on Sooted Paper ^ 

" I stuck a sheet of common letter-paper upon a somewhat 
larger board of wood ; it was the cover of a wooden box, in 
which Herr Merz had sent me some large prisms for spectro- 
scopic purposes from Munich four days before. By moving 
the paper over a petroleum lamp without a cylinder it was 
spread all over with soot (lampblack), and then placed under 
the table at which W. Weber, Slade, and I had taken our 
seats. Hoping to obtain upon the sooted paper the impress 
of the hand, as on the previous day, we at first directed our 
attention again to the magnetic experiments. Suddenly the 
board was pushed forward with force under the table about 
the distance of one meter, and on my raising it, there was on 
it the impression of a naked left foot. I at once desired 
Slade to stand up and show me both his feet. He did this 

' "Transcendental Physics," pp. 67-68. 



OBJECTIONS MET 431 

most willingly; after he had drawn off his shoes, we exam- 
ined the stockings for any adhering particles of soot, but 
without finding anything of the sort. Then we made him 
put his foot on a measure, from which it appeared that the 
length of his foot from the heel to the great toe was 22.5 
centimeters, whereas the length of the impression of the foot 
between the same parts amounted only to 18.5 centimeters. 
"Two days later, on December 17, 1877, at eight o'clock 
in the evening, I repeated this experiment, only with the 
difference that instead of a board 46 centimeters long by 22 
broad a slate was used, whose surface, not covered by the 
wooden frame, was 14.5 centimeters broad and 22 long. 
Upon this free surface I stuck a half sheet of letter-paper 
(Bath) cut down to exactly the same dimensions. Imme- 
diately before the sitting I myself, in the presence of wit- 
nesses, sooted the paper in the manner above described. The 
slate was then, as before the board, laid under the table at 
which we sat, with the sooted side uppermost. Upon a 
given sign we got up after about four minutes, and upon the 
slate was again the impression of the same left foot which we 
had obtained two days earlier upon the board. I have had 
this impression reproduced photographically on a reduced 
scale. " 

In reply to the criticisms of some of his skeptical col- 
leagues at the Leipsic University, Zollner says : 

" That Slade's stockings had not been cut away under- 
neath for this purpose — as was conjectured by some ' men of 
science ' in Leipsic, who in unimportant things accept our 
physical observations with absolute confidence, but in refer- 
ence to the foregoing have not hesitated to instruct us in the 
elementary rules for instituting exact observations — of that, 
as already mentioned, we satisfied ourselves immediately after 
the experiment. 

" Meanwhile, to meet all such doubts (and the attempts 
at explanation are scarcely less wonderful than are the facts 
themselves), I proposed to Mr. Slade an experiment which, 
according to the theory of the four-dimensional space, must 
easily succeed. In fact, if the effects observed by us pro- 
ceed from intelligent beings occupying in the absolute space 
places which in the direction of the fourth dimension lie 



432 FOURTH DIMENSIONAL BEINGS 

near the places occupied by Mr. Slade and us in the three- 
dimensional space, and therefore necessarily invisible to us, 
for these beings the interior of a figure of three-dimen- 
sional space, enclosed on all sides, is just as easily accessible 
as is to us, three-dimensional beings, the interior of a surface 
enclosed on all sides by a line — a two-dimensional figure. 
A two-dimensional being can represent to itself a straight 
line with only one perpendicular in the respective two-dimen- 
sional regions of space (to which it belongs phenomenally). 
We, on the contrary, as three-dimensional beings, know that 
there are infinitely many perpendiculars to a straight line in 
space, which collectively form the two-dimensional geometri- 
cal place of the perpendicular plane of that straight line. 
Analogously, we can conceive only one perpendicular to a 
plane; a being of four dimensions would, however, be able 
to conceive infinitely many perpendiculars to a plane, collec- 
tively forming the three-dimensional place which in the fourth 
dimension stands perpendicular to that plane. By our nature 
as three-dimensional beings we could form for ourselves no 
representation of these space relations, altho we are in the 
position to discover ideally (begrifflick), by analogy, the pos- 
sibility of their real existence. The reality of their existence 
can only be disclosed through y^c/j of obsefvation.'' 

Professor Zollner made the following interesting experi- 
ment : 

Under Severe Test Conditions 

" I took a book-slate, bought by myself ; that is, two slates 
connected at one side by cross hinges, like a book for folding 
up. In the absence of Slade I lined both slates within, on 
the sides applied to one another, with a half sheet of my 
letter-paper, which, immediately before the sitting, was evenly 
spread with soot in the way already described. This slate I 
closed, and remarked to Mr. Slade that if my theory of the 
existence of intelligent four-dimensional beings in nature was 
well founded, it must be an easy thing for them to place on 
the interior of the closed slates the impression of feet hither- 
to only produced on the open slates. Slade laughed, and 
thought that this would be absolutely impossible ; even his 
' spirits,' which he questioned, seemed at first much perplexed 
with this proposition, but finally answered with the stereo- 



A STARTLING SUCCESS 433 

typed caution, * We will try it.' To my great surprise, Slade 
consented to my laying the closed book-slate (which I had 
never let out of my hands after I had spread the soot) on my 
lap during the sitting, so that I could continually observe it 
to the middle. ' We might have sat at the table in the bright- 
ly lighted room for about five minutes, our hands linked 
with those of Slade in the usual manner above the table, 
when I suddenly felt on two occasions, the one shortly after 
the other, the slate pressed down upon my lap, without my 
having perceived anything in the least visible. Three raps 
on the table announced that all was completed, and when I 
opened the slate there was within it on the one side the im- 
pression of a right foot, on the other side that of a left foot, 
and indeed of the same which we had already obtained on the 
two former evenings." 

Professor Zollner described the appearance at times of 
hands in the clear light visible to all around the table. 

Case V. — Rev. W. Stainton Moses was the medium in 
this case. The account is given by Dr. Stanhope Temple- 
man Speer. I take it from the article on Moses in the Pro- 
ceedings of the S. P. R."^ and written by Frederic Myers. 
I repeat that Rev. Mr. Moses was a man of great ability and 
purity of character. Myers knew him well and had all con- 
fidence in him. 

" On the loth of August, after some other phenomena, a 
large globe of light rose from the side of the table opposite 
to me and sailed up to the level of our faces, and then van- 
ished. It was followed by several more, all of which rose up 
from the side opposite to me, and sometimes to the right and 
sometimes to the left of the medium. At request the next 
light was placed slowly in the center of the table. It was 
apparently as large as a shaddock, and was surrounded with 
drapery. At this time the medium was entranced, and the 
controlling spirit informed me that he would endeavor to 
place the light in the medium's hand. Failing in this, he 
said he would knock on the table in front of me. Almost 

1 In the previous experiments the board and the slate had been laid open upon 
the floor under the table. 
'Vol. ix., pp. 245-253. 
28 



434 REV. W. S. MOSES'S EXPERIMENTS 

immediately a light came and stood on the table close to me. 
' You see; now listen, I will knock.' Very slowly the light 
rose up, and struck three distinct blows on the table. * Now 
I will show you my hand. ' A large, very bright light then 
came up, and inside of it appeared the materialized hand of 
the spirit. He moved the fingers about close to my face. 
The appearance was as distinct as can be conceived. The 
power having become exhausted, he exhorted me to wake the 
medium, make him wash his face and hands in cold water, 
and to tell him nothing till that had been done. He also 
insisted on my writing a close account of what had been 
done. 

"' On the following evening I placed the paper containing 
the account on the table, together with a pencil, and asked 
that the light might be brought down upon it. This was 
done several times. The medium having become entranced, 
I requested the controlling spirit to append his signature 
to the document, if it were possible to do so. He said he 
would try. He then brought a very large and bright light, 
and passed it up and down over the face of the entranced 
medium, so that I could see it distinctly. He told me that 
the folds which I saw round the light were drapery, and to 
prove it he brought the light and passed the drapery over 
the back of my hand several times. It was perfectly tangi- 
ble. I asked that a light might be placed close to my face. 
He assented, and told me to close my eyes until told to open 
them. I did so, and in opening them I saw close to my eyes 
a large and very bright light, the size of the globe of a 
moderator lamp. He told me to rub my hands so as to gen- 
erate more power, and very soon another large light, held by 
a hand, appeared on the table. This time the hand appeared 
to be outside of the drapery, and moved the fingers about 
freely, and receded from the light, as tho the lamp were held 
in another hand. After other lights had been shown, I heard 
the pencil moving, and repeating his admonition of the pre- 
vious evening, he departed, leaving on the paper a specimen 
of direct spirit caligraphy. 

" I have omitted to say that the way of renewing the 
light when it grew dim was by making passes over it with 
the hand. The lights were of the kind described previously, 
and consisted of a nucleus which was said to be brought by 
the controlling spirit, surrounded by a luminous haze and an 



EXHAUSTIVE TO THE MEDIUM 435 

envelope of drapery. They varied in size and luminosity, 
and seemed to be more easily and fully developed when I 
rubbed my hands together or on my coat. At one time a 
portion of a forearm was distinctly visible, and the hand con- 
taining the light was pressed very distinctly on mine as it lay 
on the table. I may add that all the cases recorded by me 
occurred when no other sitter was present but myself. 

" S. T. S." 
Of these lights Moses says : 

" These strange phenomena have now ceased for some 
time past. The drain on the vital strength of the medium 
was too great to be continued. As it was, the experiments 
made were attended by very great subsequent prostration, and 
the phase passed away, as the levitations described in Chapter 
I. ceased after a time. In the one case I strongly objected 
to the manifestation; in the other harm ensued. Both 
have therefore ceased. 

" Since the commencement of the present year we have 
had another kind of light altogether, which is still shown 
occasionally. It is apparently a little round disk of light, 
which twinkles like a star. It has a dark side, which is gen- 
erally turned toward me, so that while other sitters have been 
carrying on a conversation, the answers being given by this 
light, I have not been able to see it at all. It is very much 
brighter than the large light, and more like a star. It 
flashes with great rapidity, and answers questions by the 
usual code of signals. The light usually hovers over my 
head, sometimes coming into the circle, but more frequently 
floating in a distant corner of the room. It is not apparently 
solid nor does it seem to be surrounded with drapery. 

" On a few occasions, not more than half a dozen, we 
have observed a bright scintillating light, which apparently 
rests on the mantel-shelf. It is about the size of a pigeon's 
Qgg, and looks like a large diamond lit up with strong light." 

Myers's Explanation of Genuine Materialization' 

In the following, Myers considers life on earth from the 
material and what he calls the metethereal points of view. 
The latter term was coined by Myers to represent the life 

1 "Human Personality," vol. ii., pp. 544-549. 



436 MEYERS EXPLAI NATION. 

that is supposed to lie beyond or after ether. By metethereal 
environment he means the spiritual world in which the soul 
exists. Myers explains : 

"To the disembodied spirit the organisms which he sees 
accreted about his incarnate fellows are no isolated, encap- 
suled things. The identity, the unbridgeable separation is 
for him — if it is anywhere — in the spirit world. These 
protoplasmic clouds can mix, in his view, as easily as the 
tails of comets ; or say as tho from the tidal afflux of half- 
colliding vaporous suns some glowing prominence shot forth, 
to fall back presently, again divided, and a part attracted 
into each parent mass. Only by some such metaphor, per- 
haps, can we picture the spirit's next achievement, and the 
fusion of portions of the vital force of several persons into an 
agency which he wields in independence of them all; ' draw- 
ing power,' as the phrase goes, from the circle as well as from 
the medium, and accomplishing mechanical work by the aid 
of their bodies, but at a distance from each. 

"All the energy that he exerts, then, is vital energy; it 
is drawn from the organisms of the persons present, even 
when the effect achieved (as the production of a cold wind) 
is unlike the effects to which living organisms commonly 
give rise. But, for the most part, the effects which he pro- 
duces do resemble the organism's natural action ; and hence, 
indeed, the objections of triviality and uselessness largely 
arise. The ' telekinetic movements ' (to use Mr. Aksakoff's 
term) which it is easiest to produce seem to differ from 
movements which the medium himself could have made only 
by starting from a point in space at some little distance out- 
side his apparent periphery. The movements are interest- 
ing, not as spectacles in themselves, but as indications that 
life can act at some distance from a living organism ; just as 
the movement of a half-drowned man's finger is interesting 
to the friend who knows not whether there still be life in 
that organism at all. 

" The condition of the medium from whom this vital 
force is being drawn seems to vary from complete tranquil- 
ity to extreme agitation, according to the ease or difficulty of 
the process. With Mr. Moses there were sometimes agitated 
movements during some difficult manifestation (as the giving 
of minute direct writing) ; but generally he was tranquilly 



"PROLONGATIONS" OF A MEDIUM 437 

entranced, with his arms resting on the table in front of 
him. 

** Let us now survey the various grades of these ectoplas- 
tic phenomena. 

" We will begin with the phenomena which keep closest 
to the medium's person, and in that sense prepare the way 
for the production of visible hands, etc., acting at a distance 
of some feet. 

" (a) And first I may mention a mode of dealing with 
the medium's body which involves no actual extradition of 
any part of its substance, but which, nevertheless, seems to 
imply a molecular manipulation (so to say) of its soft tissues. 
I refer to the elongations noticed with Mr. D. D. Home. 
In these cases — if, provisionally, they can be contemplated 
as actual objective occurrences — the intercostal regions 
seemed to be the especial seat of the extension, which is 
described as rapid and painless, altho sometimes followed by 
vomiting. 

" (i?) Another and apparently more developed form of pro- 
longation has been observed with Mr. Moses. These are 
phantom arms and hands, reproducing the arms of the me- 
dium, coat-sleeves, shirt-cuffs, and all ; and extended generally 
from the shoulder, straightout, and above the true arms. 
These supplementary or ' counterpartal ' arms (suspicious 
objects enough, until observed under good conditions) seem 
never to have been actually touched, but are swiftly retracted 
into the medium, or simply vanish, if an attempt is made to 
grasp them. Nevertheless, the hands in which they terminate 
do appear to move objects. 

" Odd and unexpected as these phantasmal arms are, they 
are instructive in more than one respect. In the first place 
they supply in a certain way a missing link between mere 
phantasms and ectoplastic phenomena. We know that as a 
rule phantasmal appearances exert no objective effect upon 
the material world ; and we know also that to this rule there 
seem to be some few exceptions. It is through these shad- 
owy yet materially active prolongations — collective hallucina- 
tions which yet can affect the solid world — that the line of 
continuity, if such there be, between purely subjective phan- 
tasm and firmly materialized hand or body may have to be 
drawn. 



438 IMPRESSIONS WITHOUT VISIBILITY 

" In the second place, these reproduced coat-sleeves stand 
apparently midway between two phenomena not obviously 
allied — viz., the appearance of dying persons as tho draped 
in their habitual clothing, and the greater facility (attested by 
Mr. Moses's guides) of manufacturing a duplicate of some 
object already existing on earth, rather than a new and origi- 
nal object of their own devising. 

" Perhaps we may link the two by saying that everything 
which is not a purely earthy phenomenon must be for us 
mortals to some extent symbolical, and that the simplest form 
of symbolism depends on mere reminiscence ; that thus the 
line of least resistance for the psychic force or telergic im- 
pulse leads to the upbuilding of the ectoplastic fabric upon 
the basis of thoughts and images which are already fashioned 
and stored in the human spirit. 

" (r) In the classes of ectoplasms already enumerated, 
there has been at least an apparent continuous connection 
with the body of the sensitive ; altho, in the last-mentioned 
case especially, that connection is of a very shadowy kind. 

" VVe now come to ectoplasms without apparent connec- 
tion with the organism from which we still must suppose 
them to be in some way derived. Two incomplete forms of 
such isolated ectoplasm first present themselves; the one 
manifesting, so to say, definition without visibility; the other 
visibility without definition. 

" As examples of a certain amount of definition without 
visibility, I take totiches and ijnprints. Slight but unmis- 
takable touches are often observed even when the ectoplastic 
process never gets any farther nor is identified with any one 
spirit. Imprints are more rarely recorded. 

" (')) A commoner way in which the detached ectoplasm 
begins its development is with an appearance of cloud, or 
light, or luminous mist, surrounding some object which is 
presently moved — the stem of a flower broken or a bell car- 
ried about the room. Such appearances, already mentioned 
under the heading of vital photogeny, are frequently recorded 
both with D. D. Home and with Mr, Moses. Their connec- 
tion with ectoplasms is shown by the fact that sometimes 
some of those present have perceived a hand, while others 
have seen only a cloud or a light; and sometimes all present 
have seen the cloud or light change into a hand. The hand 
seems to oscillate about the limits of definite visibility, like 



SEMIMATERIALIZATIONS 439 

vapor which in a changing temperature condenses and re- 
expands. 

" Two short passages (quoted from Mr. Moses's notebooks) 
will illustrate this semiraaterialization [these talks are with 
supposed controls] : 

" ' Q. The beads that came in the light seemed to be 
projected from behind me; in the dark they seemed to fall. 

" ' A. It is necessary to use the force or power emanating 
from your body more carefully in light. It is far more diffi- 
cult to regulate it. The objects were thrown near you gen- 
tly. At other times they were allowed to fall as might 
chance. 

" ' Q. One seemed to come out of the letter I was hand- 
ing to Mrs. G. 

" ' A. No, but the movement of your hand threw off 
force, as in darkness you may see luminous vapor proceeding 
from the fingers. The force is given off at the fingers and 
head most, hence objects are brought or moved more readily 
near your head or hands. Hence the movement of objects 
over your head and the production of the scent. Hence, 
too, rubbing the hands is useful and placing the fingers on 
the table charges the wood. So when you moved your hand 
it gave the opportunity which was used. 

" * Q. That scent from my head is very curious. Is it 
put on or drawn out ? 

" * A. Drawn out, but I can not tell you of that. 

" ' Monday, March 23, 1874. 

" ' Q. Can I have any information about that extraordi- 
nary writing } 

" ' (We held a seance last night at which some very mi- 
nute direct writing was given by Doctor and Prudens.) 

" ' A. It was done with great pains and care as an experi- 
ment. We can do more than that. 

" ^ Q. It is the most curious piece I ever saw. Who 
wrote it .'' 

" ' A. The spirits who signed, aided by many others. We 
were assisted last night by a powerful band who were able 
to overcome unfavorable conditions. We have said before 
that no such manifestation is ever done by us alone, but by 
many assistants. 

" * Q. The writing is so minute and clear. 



<( i 
ii i 



440 A SPIRIT EXPLAINS WRITING 

" ' A. We could do more minute writing and will en- 
deavor so to do. Much power was used in endeavoring to 
complete the manifestation with care. To that reason is due 
the physical contortion which attends the manifestation. 
It is more difficult to write with minute care. We will 
show you what we can do one day. 

" ' Q. Doctor and Prudens were the actual amanuenses ? 

" * A. Yes, they actually wrote, as you would see from 
the character of the writing. It is always so. 

'" O. I thought Prudens's writing was not his, but an 
imitation. 

A. That would not be allowed. 
O. Was the pencil actually used ? 

" ' A. Oh, yes. 

" ' Q. Was a hand materialized ? 

" ' A. Not as you understand it, but sufficiently so to use 
the instrument. It would not have been visible to the nat- 
ural eye. 

" * Q. The pencil would have seemed to move alone. 

" ' A. Yes, to the natural eye. ' 

" (e) In describing these imperfectly aggregated ecto- 
plasms we have already touched on the next class, that of 
quasi-organic detached ectoplasms. These are especially 
hands, sometimes with wrists or arms attached, but now with 
no mere shadowy or duplicated drapery, but a drapery which 
is their own, and for the tipie being is as tangible as them- 
selves. Such hands are reported in the cases of D. D. Home 
and Mr. Moses. 

" These ectoplasms, moreover, when developed, may be 
recognizable ; they may serve as indications of identity. 
With D, D. Home this seems frequently to have been the 
case, and the special shape and character of hands seen formed 
one of the most generally impressive points in his phenomena. 
In Mr. Moses's case the hands (except once in a photograph) 
were not claimed as belonging to personal friends ; but the 
lean brown hand and wrist which usually appeared (Mr, 
Moses's own hand being thick, plump, and white) seemed 
appropriate to the Arabian philosopher to whom it was as- 
serted to belong, 

" Among these detached ectoplasms must be reckoned the 
phenomenon of ' the direct voice. ' Utterance may be refer- 



IF A HAND, THEN A BODY 441 

able to an ectoplastic throat as distinctly as grip to ectoplastic 
fingers, and may form of course an even higher manifesta- 
tion, capable of manifesting more intelligence and of giving 
more convincing indications of identity. But this phenom- 
enon (which I believe myself to have observed elsewhere) 
has been only imperfectly shown in the cases on which this 
present survey is based. 

" (C) Nor is it desirable here to dwell at length upon the 
most advanced type of ectoplasy; when an apparently com- 
plete form seems to live for the time an independent life. 
This never occurred through Mr. Moses. Something like it 
occurred through D. D. Home several times, tho the solidity 
of the form was not tested. No more, therefore, need here 
be said than that this completer development of the isolated 
or independent ectoplasm differs in no fundamental way from 
the types which we have already discussed. On the frequent 
fraudulent simulations of this phenomenon, there is no need 
here to dwell. But for those who admit that a hand can be 
temporarily thrown off in this strange kind of a sexual gem- 
mation, it would be illogical to deny the possibility of a whole 
apparent human form thus originated and thus reabsorbed or 
disappearing, 

" At whatever point, indeed, among the phenomena of 
ectoplasy we may draw our evidential line, it seems to me 
probable that we have here got at the root of most of the 
physical phenomena assignable to external control. It is 
this power of using the vital force of men which brings unem- 
bodied beings into relation with the material world. It is 
this power, too, which links the physical with the mental 
phenomena of spirit control, enabling the unseen guide to 
use the machinery of thought as well as of motion in ways 
which the unaided organism could never have devised. To 
some of these intellectual phenomena we must now turn." 



442 CRUCIAL TEST OF SPIRITUALISM 

VI 

SPIRIT IDENTITY 

Do Any of these So-called Spirits Prove their 
Identity ? 

Here is the crucial test of Spiritualism — the proof of 
identity. Yet are we quite sure that this is not, as Mr. 
Kipling would say, another story ? The fact that it is a 
spirit outside of the body that communicates would be, if 
proved, a very important matter, Marconi might have been 
sure that the influence that sounded the letters in his receiver 
was from across the ocean, but he might not have been sure 
that somebody else had not found out the code and how to 
work the instrument — some one other than the man who 
claimed to be signaling. 

But Marconi had an advantage over the investigator of 
Spiritualism. He had seen the instrument on the other side 
of the ocean; had, in fact, superintended its construction. 
We have never seen the other side of the " silent gulf " from 
which these spirit signals purport to come. From the very 
nature of the case we must demand proof of identity, that 
we may know that the signals do not arise from material 
conditions on this side, either in or outside the medium. 
The proof of identity may not be essential to prove 
Spiritualism, but if such proof can be furnished it should be 
conclusive. 

Can this proof be furnished .-* 

Let us see how nearly it has been reached. 

Case I. — Some time ago in a distant city I called to see 
a medium unannounced. I am as certain as I can be of any- 
thing not mathematically proved that she had no thought of 
my identity. In this interview she fell into a trance. My 
mother claimed to be present and indicated what caused her 
death by expressing pain in the front part of her right foot. 



A WELL VERIFIED CASE 443 

The fact is, my mother, when I was a boy, stepped upon a 
needle which ran through her slipper into her foot. I pulled 
out the needle with a pair of pincers, but within three days 
paralysis of the nerves began at the wound, and before a 
week she was dead. 

This experiment may be explained by mind-reading or 
telepathy ; hence it is not conclusive, altho it tends to proof 
of identity. 

Case II. — Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage, of New York City, 
then of Boston, narrates the following incident — with all of 
the facts he is personally acquainted, the affair happening 
among his friends : 

" Early on Friday morning, January 18, 1884, the steamer 
City of Columbus, en route from Boston to Savannah, was 
wrecked on the rocks off Gay Head, the southwestern point 
of Martha's Vineyard. Among the passengers was an elderly 
widow, the sister-in-law of one of my friends and the mother 
of another. 

" This lady, Mrs. K., and her sister, Mrs, B., had both 
been interested in psychic investigation and had held sittings 
with a psychic whom I will call Mrs, E, Mrs, B. was in poor 
health and was visited regularly for treatment every Monday 
by the psychic, Mrs. E. On occasion of these professional 
visits, Mrs. B. and her sister, Mrs. K. , would frequently 
have a sitting. This Mrs. E., the psychic, had been known 
to all the parties concerned for many years, and was held in 
the highest respect. She lived in a town fifteen or twenty 
miles from Boston. This, then, was the situation of affairs 
when the wreck of the steamer took place. 

" The papers of Friday evening, January 1 8, of course 
contained accounts of the disaster. On Saturday, January 
19, Dr. K., my friend, the son of Mrs, K., hastened down to 
the beach in search of the body of his mother. No trace 
whatever was discovered. He became satisfied that she was 
among the lost, but was not able to find the body. Saturday 
night he returned to the city. Sunday passed by. On Mon- 
day morning, the 21st, Mrs. E. came from her country home 
to give the customary treatment to her patient, Mrs. B. 
Dr, K, called on his aunt while Mrs, E. was there, and they 



444 DESCRIBES HER DROWNING 

decided to have a sitting to see if there would come to them 
anything that even purported to be news from the missing 
mother and sister. Immediately Mrs. K. claimed to be 
present ; and, along with many other matters, she told them 
three separate and distinct things which, if true, it was ut- 
terly impossible for either of them to have known. 

" I. She told them that, after the steamer had sailed, she 
had been able to exchange her inside stateroom for an out- 
side one. All that any of them knew was that she had been 
obliged to take an inside room, and that she did not want it. 

" 2. She told them that she played whist with some 
friends in the steamer saloon during the evening ; and she 
further told them the names of the ones who had made up 
the table. 

" 3. Then came this startling and utterly unexpected 
statement : ' I do not want you to think of me as having been 
drowned. I v/as not drowned. When the alarm came I was 
in my berth. Being frightened, I jumped up and ran out of 
the stateroom. In the passageway I was suddenly struck a 
blow on my head, and instantly it was over. So do not 
think of me as having gone through the process of drowning. ' 
Then she went on to speak of the friends she had found 
and who were with her. The latter, of course, could not be 
verified. But the other things could be. It was learned, 
through survivors, that the matter of the stateroom and the 
whist, even to the partners, was precisely as had been stated. 
But how to verify the other statement, particularly as the 
body had not been discovered .-' 

"All this was on Monday, the 21st. On Tuesday, the 
22d, the doctor and a friend went again to the beach. After 
a prolonged search among the bodies that had been recovered, 
they were able to identify that of the mother. And they 
found the right side of the head all crushed in by a blow. 

" The impression made on the doctor, at the sitting on 
Monday, was that he had been talking with his mother. The 
psychic, Mrs. E. , is not a clairvoyant, and there were many 
things connected with the sitting that made the strong im- 
pression of the mother's present personality. In order to 
have obtained all these facts related under numbers i, 2, and 
3, the psychic would have had to be not only clairvoyant, 
but to have gotten into mental relations with several differ- 
ent people at the same time. The reading of several different 



FOUND BODY CORROBORATES 445 

minds at once, and also clairvoyant seeing, not only of the 
bruised head, but of the facts that took place on the Friday 
previous (this being Monday) — all these multiplex and diverse 
operations, going on simultaneously, make up a problem 
that the most ardent advocate of telepathy as a solvent of 
psychic facts would hardly regard as reasonably coming 
within its scope. 

" Let us look at it clearly. Telepathy deals only with 
occurrences taking place at the time. I do not know of a 
case where clairvoyance is even claimed to see what were 
once facts, but which no longer exist. Then there must 
have been simultaneous communication with several minds. 
This, I think, is not even claimed as possible by anybody. 
Then let it be remembered that Mrs. E. is not conscious of 
possessing either telepathic or clairvoyant power. Such is 
the problem. 

" I express no opinion of my own. I only say that the 
doctor, my friend, is an educated, level-headed, noble man. 
He felt sure that he detected undoubted tokens of his mother's 
presence. If such a thing is ever possible, surely this is 
the explanation most simple and natural. " 

Dr. Thomson Jay Hudson, in an elaborate attempt to ex- 
plain this case ^ in harmony with his theory of telepathy, in- 
sists that Dr. Savage is wrong in claiming that " telepathy 
deals only with occurrences at the time." Hudson holds that 
Mrs. K. sent the telepathic message at the time of her death 
and that it did not report itself for some time afterward. 
This would imply that after her skull was crushed she had 
time to send a message that her death was instant. 

The theory of clairvoyance would have helped out Dr. 
Hudson, but he does not accept clairvoyance. If the mes- 
sage was sent at the time of death and lodged in some sub- 
jective mind and this message was simply read by the me- 
dium to the son, there could have been no conversation 
between the spirit of the mother and her son. With the 
death of the mother, according to Hudson, the lines of com- 
munication were broken and the messages absolutely ceased. 

' " A Scientific Demonstration of a Future Life," pp. 81-89. 



446 STRONGLY VERIFIED 

But there was at this time through the medium additional 
communication from the mother to the son. In a letter Dr. 
Savage tells me : " I know the son did have a good deal of 
conversation with his mother at this time. This conversa- 
tion was of a strikingly personal and 7'emarkable character'' 
Dr. Savage comments on Dr. Hudson's explanation : " I 
think the theory of telepathy is entirely inadequate to account 
for the facts in this incident, unless the telepathic agent was 
Dr. K.'s mother in the other world." 

Dr. Hudson gratuitously clothes the subjective mind with 
omniscience. Grant him his assumption, then his task be- 
comes an easy one. 

Case III. — The Rev. Wm. Stainton Moses gives the 
following ' with much detail of proof, letters from United 
States government officers giving the army records, and 
finally the interview with the family in Brooklyn by Epes 
Sargent. It would be difficult to imagine proof of spirit 
identity more complete than this case supplies. The facts 
as given by Stainton Moses are, in brief, that a spirit, who 
claimed to be an old American soldier, communicated to him 
(Mr. Moses himself was the medium) at Isle of Wight, Eng- 
land. The spirit said that his name was Abraham Floren- 
tine and that he fought on the American side in the War of 
1812, and that he had lately died in Brooklyn, U. S. A., his 
home. He gave his age and his time of service in the war. 
Rev. Stainton Moses declared that he had never heard of the 
existence of such a man, but was so impressed by the truth- 
fulness of the spirit that he communicated the facts to an 
English paper and requested American papers to copy. The 
case was taken up by Epes Sargent in America and hunted 
down, and it was found that all that this spirit said about 
himself was truth. Did my space permit, I would give the 
case in full, as it is typical of thousands of others. 

Case IV. — Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage, of New York, gives 
an illustration of a spirit at work to relieve the distress of 

• " Spirit Identity," pp. 110-116. 



"SPIRITS" PLANNING RELIEF 447 

the poor. This case also is strong proof of identity for two 
reasons: (i) It is so like the man as he was before he died; 
(2) it is not at all probable that a deceiving spirit would be 
so persistently interested in doing good to others. Dr. 
Savage tells us that the man was a famous preacher to the 
poor in Boston ; he and his wife made a specialty in help- 
ing the poor who had few other friends, calling them " my 
poor." This preacher took to himself a man helper or col- 
league. They both were entirely orthodox, and naturally 
would have nothing to do with Spiritualism. After the 
minister's death a number of interesting experiences began 
which Dr. Savage says would fill a book should he describe 
them all. The widow and this man helper object to the 
attention of the public being called to their work, as notoriety 
would hinder the privacy of the relief which they give — a 
work that has been carried forward now for years — and hence 
the name and address are not given. 

I must let Dr. Savage tell the balance of the story in his 
sympathetic, interesting way : ^ 

" It cost effort and money to carry on this work, and no- 
body but two or three intimate friends were ever let into the 
secret. The widow of the colleague of this old clergyman 
was the ' medium.' She had never herself seen a medium in 
her life. She had had nothing whatever to do with ordinary 
Spiritualism, did not believe in it, and in fact was opposed 
to it. She was, and is still, if living, not only orthodox, 
but intensely religious in her feelings. Such, then, was the 
situation. This old clergyman and his wife were the claimed 
agents in the unseen, who spoke through this widow of his 
former colleague, and made her their agent in their charit- 
able undertakings. She lived in a town not far from the city 
of Boston. She would receive orders to go into town to such 
a street and such a number, and would be told that there she 
would find such and such person or persons in such or such a 
condition, and she was to render them the service that was 
needed. Cases like this occurred over and over again. She 
would follow these directions, knowing absolutely nothing 

I "Can Telepathy Explain ?" pp. 84-89. 



448 A "SPIRIT" PREVENTS SUICIDE 

about the case except that which had thus been told her, and 
she said that there was never a mistake made. She always 
found the person and the condition as they had been described 
to her, and she did for them what their case required. In 
one instance she traveled to a city in another State under 
orders like these, knowing not even the name of the person 
she was to seek out, except that which had been told her. 
She found the case, however, as it had been reported, and 
rendered the called-for assistance. Not all of these were 
cases of mere physical need. Some of them were instances 
of rescue from moral peril, the description of which would 
read like a chapter in a sensational story. 

" As a part of this general ministry, another happening is 
worthy of record. The daughter of this old minister received 
explicit orders, claiming to come from her father and through 
his colleague's widow as the medium, to enclose twenty dol- 
lars in an envelope and send it to another town, directing it 
to an address of which she had never heard. She hesitated 
about sending the money in this way, and wanted to v\?ait 
and get a check so as to avoid risk of loss. She was per- 
emptorily ordered, however, not to wait, as the matter was one 
of immediate and vital importance. She sent the money as 
thus directed, two ten-dollar bills. I have had the privilege 
of reading the letter acknowledging its receipt. It was 
written with difficulty and the use of a lead pencil, and the 
grammar and spelling were poor. One could, however, almost 
hear the drip of tears as he read it. It told the story of 
abuse and desertion on the part of her husband. The for- 
saken wife had done all she could to keep her little family 
together. She had reached the end of the endeavor, had just 
pawned her last bit of decent furniture, and with the proceeds 
had bought some charcoal and was making preparations to go 
out of the world and take her children with her, when the 
money arrived. 

" There is one other incident in the life of this minister's 
daughter that is important enough to set down, altho it is not 
connected with this particular work. This lady lived at the 
South End in Boston. She had a friend, a wealthy widow, 
living at the Back Bay. This widow was known to a few 
intimates as possessing psychic sensitiveness, so that she 
herself received what she claimed to be communications from 
the other world. One of those commonly communicating was 



SPIRIT TELEGRAPHY 449 

the old minister I have referred to, the father of the friend 
living at the South End. One day there came a note from 
Beacon Street asking her friend to come and dine with her 
on the following Monday, as she had many things which she 
wished to talk over. The South End lady, when she read 
the note, said to herself : ' It is impossible for me to go, for 
I have an engagement in another direction at that time.' 
And then the thought coming into her mind, she said to her- 
self : * Now, if father does really communicate with this 
friend, why can not he tell her that I am engaged next Mon- 
day ? If he only would, it would be quite a satisfactory test. ' 
Then the matter passed from her mind. The next morning 
before breakfast she wrote a letter explaining the situation, 
and gave it to the postman when he called with the mail 
about eight o'clock. Now it is possible that this letter 
might have reached Beacon Street in the twelve o'clock 
delivery, tho, from my experience of years with the postal 
authorities in Boston, I should say that the probabilities are 
that it would not arrive before three; but that is of no con- 
sequence. Between nine and ten that same morning the 
coachman of the friend in Beacon Street appeared with a 
note, which said : ' You need not take the trouble to answer 
my invitation, for your father has been here and has told me 
that you are engaged next Monday and so can not dine with 
me.'" 

Case V.— As repeatedly mentioned, the Society for 
Psychical Research has been now for more than a dozen 
years scientifically investigating these hidden phenomena 
through the mediumship of Mrs. Piper, having control of 
her whole time, and paying her a salary so as to relieve her 
from all anxiety and the ordinary temptations that lead some 
mediums " to help out the spirits." Mrs. Piper is under the 
immediate supervision of Richard Hodgson in Boston, the 
secretary and treasurer of the American branch of the so- 
ciety. He is a man whose peculiar fitness for this kind of 
work is recognized both in Europe and in America. When 
these psychic investigations began, Mr. Hodgson was " a hard- 
headed, critical skeptic," a disbeliever in life beyond the 

grave, a scientific materialist. 
29 



450 "MAKES THINGS LIVELY" 

Much time has been given by Mr. Hodgson to the inves- 
tigation (i) whether spirits do communicate; (2) whether 
any of those communicating are the persons they claim to 
be. The following case is deemed by Mr. Hodgson as pecul- 
iarly conclusive on both these points : 

George Pelham met his death suddenly in New York in 
1892. He had devoted himself to literature and philosophy, 
was trained as a lawyer, was a member of the S. P. R., and 
he and Mr. Hodgson were well acquainted and had had ear- 
nest conversations concerning the future life, in which neither 
believed. Mr. Pelham in one of their talks said that if he 
died first and found himself " still existing," he would " make 
things lively " in the effort to reveal to Mr. Hodgson the fact 
of his continued existence. 

Shortly after his death " George Pelham " appeared 
through Mrs. Piper, who did not know until long afterward 
who Pelham was. In many ways and to a large number of 
friends he identified himself to the complete satisfaction of 
Mr. Hodgson and other acquaintances. Mr. Hodgson gives 
an account of many of these sittings in his " History of the 
G. P. Communications." ^ The whole story of the complete 
identification of Pelham by Hodgson makes exceedingly inter- 
esting reading to any one who cares for these investigations 
which seem, in the judgment of many of the ablest members of 
the Society for Psychical Research, to be leading to a scien- 
tific demonstration that " if a man die " he will live again. 

I Proceedings, S. P. R., vol. xiii., pp. 295-335. 



GHOST PICTURES 451 

VII 

SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY 

A Business Friend Secures Remarkable Results under Test 
Conditions — He Brings His Own Plates and He Him- 
self Develops the Pictures — Pictures Appear when the 
Medium does not Touch the Plates — And also when 
no Camera is Used — Results Obtained when Plates are 
Left in their Original Packages — My Friend Secures Pic- 
tures when Alone in His Room — Alfred Russel Wallace s 
Experiences — Investigations by a Member of the Society for 
Psychical Research 

Fraud has been writ large over spirit photography, and 
all spirit photographs are viewed by the public with more 
suspicion perhaps than is any other class of psychic phe- 
nomena. 

Almost any photographer will tell us that "ghosts' pic- 
tures are easily made; any of us can make them." If this 
be true, a " trick photograph," as Alfred Russel Wallace 
says, should be easily detected by the professional photog- 
rapher, and the particular way the trick is done could be 
pointed out. Unquestionably many fraudulent mediums 
have reaped a rich harvest in this field and many a fraud has 
been uncovered. There are numerous ways in which this 
particular class of frauds is perpetrated. The double expo- 
sure is the most common of the tricks employed. A friend 
showed me the other day a picture of himself and his spirit 
daughter leaning upon his breast. He assured me that he 
recognized at a glance that this was a picture of his dead 
daughter, and he declared that it was a good one. In reply 
to my question, how do you k7iow that this picture of your 
daughter is not the result of a second exposure of the same 
plate, he pointed triumphantly to a Grand Army badge that 



452 SUCCESSFUL FRAUD 

appeared on her face in the photograph. The badge, he said, 
was on the lapel of his coat, right ''under this particular spot 
in the spirit face,^' when his picture was taken, and he de- 
clared that this badge could not appear through a second ex- 
posure. This was not conclusive proof, for a bright object 
will appear through a dark spot in a second exposure. Be- 
sides, these army badges are easily obtained, and when a 
trick is to be played with one of them, it is easy to place it on 
the picture or dummy that " sits " for the second exposure. 

It will be remicmbered that about a score of years ago 
M. Buguet, a " spirit photographer," was brought to book for 
fraud by the French Government. He confessed that by 
second exposures he performed his tricks with the aid of 
dummy figures and " cut cardboards skilfully draped." 

A critical examination of some of the older trick photo- 
graphs reveal backgrounds marked in a way that seem clearly 
to indicate that they were subjected to second exposures. 
But the tricksters have become so skilful that now it is diffi- 
cult to detect frauds by the markings of the background. 

Mrs. Sidgwick, the wife of the late Professor Sidgwick 
of Cambridge University, and the sister of Prime Minister 
Balfour, gives the following example ' of what she thinks to 
be a form of mental illusions that sometimes fool honest me- 
diums and investigators. Mrs. Sidgwick, as the reader will 
recall, was a very keen investigator of psychic phenomena, 
laboring in behalf of the Society for Psychical Research. 

" A correspondent writes : ' One fine summer's afternoon 
in July or August, 1888, 1 decided to be photographed in the 
small yard at the back [of the house] with my baby boy on 
my shoulders. His mother, as you know, had died eighteen 
months before, leaving me a widower at twenty-seven years 
of age, with a boy scarcely a fortnight old. I prepared the 
apparatus, focused it, and instructed my " buttons " how to 
expose the plate, and then took up my position with the child 
crowing with delight as he occupied so prominent a part in 

» Proceedings, S. P. R., Part xis., p. 283. 



THE CAMERA'S WONDERFUL EYE 453 

the affair. In a few seconds the sun had done its share, 
whereupon I retired to the dark room to develop the " pic- 
ture." I was watching the plate, as I slowly agitated the 
solution it was in, with deep interest to see with what success 
we were to be repaid for the trouble, when suddenly there 
appeared before my startled eyes the form and lineaments of 
my dead wife ! It was there and then and has been ever 
since absolutely inexplicable. The very idea was entirely 
unthought of and unknown to me. I had not then even 
heard of any such thing as spirit photography. Her portrait 
appeared just behind myself and child, between us and an 
ivy-clad wall. It became clearer, and then slowly faded, tho 
still discernible. When I had passed the plate through the 
hyposulphite of soda, washed it, and took it to the daylight, 
the likeness was no longer traceable. ... I was then, and 
still am, incredulous as to the power of spirits departed to 
reappear in a spiritual imitation of a material form, and am 
inclined to consider the "vision " referred to above similar to 
those faces and forms that I, for one, can see in nearly any 
wall paper of fantastic design, if so desirous. ' " 

Possibly the correspondent was right in his explanation, 
but is there not room for a reasonable doubt.-' 

The fact that photography lends itself so easily to fraud 
and illusion should make us very circumspect when we have 
to do with this class of phenomena. It must not be for- 
gotten, however, that the photographic plate is far more 
sensitive to light than is the eye. It often reveals to the 
astronomer distant stars which his eye unassisted can not 
see. If it be true that spirits at times take to themselves 
bodies made up of matter so attenuated that the ordinary eye 
can not detect their presence, there is not an a priori reason 
why their presence might not be revealed through pho- 
tography. In the examination also of this class of phenom- 
ena we should free our minds from all predisposition. 

My conviction had long been that at least this class of 
phenomena is all fraudulent, but during the past year I have 
been brought face to face with a large number of experi- 
ments through private individuals — one a personal friend — 



454 WALLACE'S JUDGMENT 

experiments of such a startling character as to have shaken 
my conviction that all of this class are either fraudulent or 
the result of faulty observation. Before considering these 
new experiments, it would be well to recall to our attention 
the observation of Alfred Russel Wallace on the subject of 
spiritual photography. ' The world-wide reputation of Wal- 
lace as a careful scientific observer claims justly for his 
conclusion most careful consideration : 

" Mr. G. H. Lewes advised the Dialectical Committee to 
distinguish carefully between * facts and inferences from 
facts.' This is especially necessary in the case of what are 
called spirit photographs. The figures which occur in these, 
when not produced by any human agency, may be of ' spiri- 
tual ' origin without being figures 'of spirits.' There is 
much evidence to show that they are, in some cases, forms 
produced by invisible intelligences, but distinct from them. 
In other cases the intelligence appears to clothe itself with 
matter capable of being perceived by us ; but even then it 
does not follow that the form produced is the actual image 
of the spiritual form. It may be but a reproduction of the 
former mortal form with its terrestrial accompaniments, _;^r 
purposes of recognition^ 

Mr. Wallace points out a number of tests that should be 
applied to avoid fraud and self-deception in making these 
photographic experiments. He then gives an account of a 
number of successful experiments he himself and friends 
made under severe scientific test conditions, which led him 
finally to the conclusion that spirit-photography is to his mind 
an indisputable fact. 

New Series of Experiments in Spirit Photography 

Dr. William J. Pierce, who figures largely in these exper- 
iments, is a business man with whom I am personally ac- 
quainted. That he is a man of probity those who have 

1 Alfred Russel Wallace, "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," pp. 192-198. 



YEARS OF TESTING 455 

known him intimately for many years strongly testify.' He 
is a manufacturer and inventor and has been for twenty-five 
years at the head of his business house, having succeeded his 
father, with home office and manufactory at 206 Post Street, 
San Francisco, and branches at 33 West Twenty-fourth 
Street, New York, and 10 City Road, London, E. C, 
England. 

It will be noted that the first series of experiments by 
Dr. Pierce were made in his business office with his own 
negatives, he himself attending to the developing. He is 
an amateur photographer of much experience. In no case 
did he permit the medium photographer, Mr. Wyllie, to have 
possession of the negative. This series, together with the 
descriptions which accompany it, was sent by Dr. Pierce in 
the first instance to H. A. Reid, M. D., president of the 
Pasadena, Cal., S. P. R."" Dr. Reid, after receiving this 
report, wrote to Dr. Pierce, most heartily commending the 
skill he evinced in these experiments. 

In answer to my letters of inquiry, Dr. Reid wrote me at 
length, sending me descriptions of his own extended investi- 
gations through this same medium. He says : 

" I spent over two years ' investigating ' Mr. Wyllie's 
'spirit-photo ' business. Every hint, suspicion, or rumor of 
fraud on his part I followed up as doggedly as ever a Pinker- 
ton detective followed a clew to crime. And in every in- 

1 Jiev. Andrew Parsons, Pastor of the First New Jerusalem Church, San Fran- 
cisco, Cal., writes me under date of December 14, 1903 : " I have known Dr. Pierce 
for over three years. He is a trusted member of this society, and a successful busi- 
ness man. I have always taken him to be a man of integrity and of good practical 
judgment." 

F. A. Berlin, attorney-at-law, 522 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, Cal., 
writes under date of December 10, 1903 : " I have known Dr. Pierce about twenty- 
eight years, and have always found him to be a man of the highest integrity and 
one of the most careful and cautious business men I know." 

Rev. D. V. Bowen, 113 Mulberry Street, Springfield, Mass., writes under date 
of December 8, 1903 : "I have known Dr. Pierce for many years, and in very inti- 
mate relations ; his integrity can not be questioned, and I know of no one who 
would be less likely to be imposed upon as an observer or investigator of the phe- 
nomena of which you speak than Dr. Pierce." 

'^ Dr. Reid is also Associate Member of the London S. P. R., and was five years 
executive secretary of the State Academy of Science, Des Moines, Iowa. 



4s6 INVOLVES BIBLE FAITH 

stance when I got down to bedrock facts of the case there 
was absolutely nothing that could stand in a court of equity 
for a minute. This was true as to suspicions of my own as 
well as imputations made by others. The accusations or 
suspicions were every time, to the best of my knowledge, 
critical acumen, and fair judgment, shown to be groundless 
and unjust, and their origin fully accounted for in a way that 
was not evasive, foggy, or quibbling. It would make a big 
book to relate in detail the stress of time, labor, personal 
discomfort, money cost, and pushing of interviews with wit- 
nesses that I underwent in hunting these things to their 
holes, and finding that there was ' nothing in it.' As a final 
conclusion of the whole matter, I hold most profoundly that 
my researches have settled and verified this fact — that the 
phenomena of so-called spirit photography have occurred and 
do occur at times as natural-law phenomena^ without any 
trickery or fraud of manipulation. Beyond this I do not 
assert, 

" If the testimony I have collected as to this main fact is 
not sufficient to substantiate this conclusion, then human 
testimony can not substantiate anything, and every man ever 
convicted of capital crime on human testimony was executed 
v/ithout valid proof. Also, then every psychic phenomenon 
or so-called miracle recorded in either Old or New Testa- 
ment has no proof and no validity. It is simply crass mate- 
rialism pitted against anything that can not be explained by 
known physical laws, and denying the possibility of any 
phenomenal intrusion of spiritual entities or forces into the 
realm of enfleshed life. I consider that the whole founda- 
tion of Christian faith in the life and career of Jesus Christ 
and His apostles is involved in this Psychical Research 
movement. 

" As to Mr. Wyllie, the medium, he was always willing 
to submit to any sort of test conditions that I could devise. 
In all my intercourse with him he never showed the least 
sign of having anything secret or hidden or mysterious about 
his business. I never found him evasive, nor even caught 
him in any misrepresentation. He was always ready to help 
me to find the address of anybody whom I wished to visit 
personally or to correspond with ; and he told me freely of 
patrons who went away disappointed, disgusted, sometimes 
* mad,' because they didn't get what they had expected to get." 



TESTS BY A BUSINESS MAN 



457 



Dr. William J. Pierce s Report of His Investigatiotis 

" This report, concerning results obtained during my in- 
vestigations of the phenomena commonly known as ' spirit 
photography ' as demonstrated through the mediumship of 
Mr. Edward Wyllie, in the city of San Francisco, has been 




Test Photograph taken January gth, 1903 — Cp. 45 



prepared at the request of H. A. Reid, M.D., 133 Mar} 
Street, Pasadena, Cal., in answer to queries propounded by 
him, as shown below : 

" Question i. — When and how many times did you procure pictures^ 
without using camera or exposing plates? 



458 MANY PICTURES TAKEN 

"Answer.- — Between January i, 1902, and the date of 
this writing I have secured satisfactory results on plates used 
in the manner indicated above in about ten instances, the 
exact and approximate dates being as follows : 

" During the month of February, 1902, one plate on which 
the face of a young child appeared. Also one plate showing 
face of an old man. 

"December 9, 1902.- — -A face (supposed to be that of an 
ancient Egyptian) appears on the plate used on this date. 

"January 9, 1903. — The face of a military-looking man 
appears on this plate. A copy accompanies this report, 
showing the date (see page 457). 

"January 23, 1903. — Face of a small child made its ap- 
pearance on the plate used on this occasion. 

" February 6, 1903. — Two faces appear on one plate on 
this date, one face much resembling that of the military man 
above mentioned and the other that of the Egyptian previ- 
ously spoken of. 

" Note. — The face of the latter is somewhat indistinct 
in this picture, but altho the picture of each individual has 
apparently been taken from a different point of view from 
that of the pictures of December 9, 1902, and January o, 
1903, the personal resemblance in each instance is quite 
marked. 

"February 13, 1903. — The face of a woman appears on 
this plate. 

"March 27, 1903. — -Two plates were experimented upon 
on this date, one showing up the face of a woman and the 
other that of a man ; the latter appearing to be that of the 
military man already mentioned, but evidently taken from 
another point of view from that of either of the others previ- 
ously obtained. 

" April I, 1903. — The face of a man appears on the plate 
held on this occasion. Memo. — A print from this negative 
accompanies this report, to illustrate the manner of picture 
usually obtained by me under the test conditions specified in 
this narrative (see page 459). 

" Note. — I would add to the above statements by men- 
tioning the fact that altho almost an equal number of plates 
(sensitized) were subjected to similar tests at various times 
during the period named in this report, no faces whatever 
made their appearance thereon at any time. 



DEVELOPED BY HIMSELF 459 

"O. 2. — Did you or did Mr. Wyllie provide tlie plates? 

"A. — I provided ray own plates in every instance and 
marked them myself in every case before he touched them. 

" Q. 3. — Wliat precautions, if any, did you take to guard against any 
sleight-of-liand cliange of plates being made by the medium ? 

"A. — I marked the plates privately, in my own dark 
room, before taking them to him, never allowed them to 




Test Photograph taken April ist, 1903 — (p. 458). 

leave my hands for an instant of time while in his presence, 
developed them in my own rooms, kept them carefully in 
my possession until such development was made, and in 
addition thereto took every other precaution that I could 



46o NO CAMKRA USED 

think of to guard against possible deception of any descrip- 
tion. 

" O. 4. — How many unseen faces appeared and how many were recog- 
nized? 

" A. — In my reply to ' No. 1/ it is shown that the num- 
ber of faces which appeared on the plates held by Mr. 
Wyllie and myself amounted to eleven, but for reasons pre- 
viously mentioned it would seem that not quite that many 
individuals are represented thereon. Replying further, 
would say that I have not been able to identify or recognize 
any of the faces mentioned above or of any one in the photo- 
graphs obtained through Mr. Wyllie with a camera (excepting 
the sitter), up to the date of this report. 

" O. 5. — Are you fully convinced that they were produced by some 
natural or psychic law of mediumship and not by any hand-skill or trick 
of the medium.^ 

" A.- — I have been unable to detect any fraud or sleight- 
of-hand work on the part of Mr. Wyllie in this matter, and, 
being very sure that I did not do it myself for the purpose of 
fooling myself or any one else, am naturally forced to the 
conclusion that it must have been done by some invisible in- 
telligent power, operating through the medium, Mr. W'yllie, 
who thus appears to be merely an instrument in the hands of 
the power of force, and therefore not a sleight-of-hand per- 
former or trickster. 

" O. 6. — Did any living person or sitter appear on the plates? 

" A. — Not being able to recognize any of the faces as yet 
that have appeared on the plates, I am unable to say whether 
any one now living on this earth is represented therein or 
not. Inasmuch as the plates particularly referred to in this 
article were not exposed through the camera, as is usual in 
taking photographs of living persons or other objects in the 
light, there was, of course, nothing of this sort visible on 
these plates. 

" O. 7. — Are there any other points or explanations of your knowledge 
or experience in connection with this strange subject? 

" A. — Regarding my personal views, in addition to those 
already expressed, would say I have been a careful and ear- 
nest investigator of many phases of the phenomena commonly 



MEDIUM CLOSELY WATCHED 461 

known as ' Spiritism ' and ' Spiritualism,' during a period 
extending over the past eighteen years, but up to this writing 
I have been unable to arrive at any definite conclusion in 
regard to the truth of the claims advanced by those who fully 
believe therein. 

" Note. — This report is accompanied by two others, 
on the same subject, from personal friends who are some- 
what interested in my investigations along these lines of 
thought. In addition to the details contained in these state- 
ments, I shall conclude my report at this time by inviting 
attention to the accompanying diagram and descriptive notes, 
regarding a recent experiment and test made through the 
mediumship of Mr. Wyllie (April 20, 1903). See page 462. 

" In this experiment, as in several others mentioned 
herein, the plates used were my own, and were arranged, 
handled, and developed by myself; positively no one else 
(except Mr. Wyllie) had any opportunity to touch them, and, 
during the minute or two in which his hands were placed 
upon them, the plates never left my own hand for an instant. 
It will be observed from the arrangement of the two plates 
that it was an utter impossibility for Mr. Wyllie to bring 
either of his hands in direct contact with the sensitized 
plate on the film side, both hands coming in contact with the 
plain glass and nothing else, except possibly the cord on 
the end nearest him which served to hold the two plates 
together. The other end of the combination I looked after 
myself, and can guarantee that the plates were not separated 
during the experiment, as my fingers were so placed as 
to touch the edges of both plates during the whole of the 
time the experiment took place. Notwithstanding these test 
conditions, a face made its appearance on the sensitized 
film — a face somewhat indistinct and ' out of focus,' it is 
true, but sufficiently plain to be easily recognized as that of 
the military- looking individual referred to in ' Answer No. 
I ' of this report, under dates of January 9, 1903, February 
6, 1903, and March 27, 1903. 

" Respectfully submitted, 

" (Signed) William J. Pierce. 
"26 Post Street, San Francisco, Gal. 
"April 23, 1903. 



462 



WELL PLANNED TEST 




Test Photograph taken April 20th, 1903 — (p. 461), 



Explanation of Diagram. 



"a, Plain glass plate, size 4X5 inches. 

" b, Sensitized plate (4 X 5) with the film side facing inward, toward 
plate a. 

" t", Thick strawboard corners, placed between the plates a and b. and 
separating them, as shown. 

" d, Location of face which appeared on plate b when developed. 

" <?, Several dark spots which also appeared on plate b when devel- 
oped, two of the spots resembling small faces. 

"/", String or twine, holding plates a and b together against the straw- 
board corner pieces, as shown by the diagram." 



LEADING PREACHER BALKED 46^, 



Experiment of Rev, J. T. Wills,' D.D., 

Pastor of the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, San 
Francisco, Cal. 

" I wish to say that for some time past my friend, Dr. 
W, J. Pierce, of this city, had been telHng me some strange 
things about spirit photograpliy, which seemed to me incredi- 
ble, and, but for the fact that they were told me by such a 
man as Dr. Pierce, I should have paid no attention to them ; 
but having known him for over thirty years as a man of truth, 
I could not doubt his word for one moment, but fearing it 
possible that the doctor might be deceived in some way in 
the matter, I said to him that I would like to see for myself 
how the thing was done and if possible find out the secret of 
the process ; and so to gratify my wish the doctor made an 
engagement with the medium, Mr. Edward Wyllie, to meet 
me at the doctor's office on April i at 4 p.m., where the doc- 
tor has a dark room and all the equipment for photography 
development purposes. At the time appointed I went, and 
on my way I called at a place where photographic supplies are 
sold and bought a half-dozen 4x5 Crown-Cramer sensitized 
plates and took them with me in my coat pocket to the office, 
where I met the medium, who impressed me as being an 
honest man. After some little talk with him I told him I 
wanted to test the matter for myself, and that I would like 
him to wash his hands, which he did, first in alcohol, then 
with soap and water, then again in alcohol, and then he 
dried them thoroughly with a clean towel ; and when his 
hands were examined and found to be perfectly clean, we 
went into the dark room, which was not really dark, but was 
lighted with a little lamp with orange color light such as 
photographers use in the developing-room. Then I took the 
plates out of my pocket and took one plate out of the pack- 
age, and after marking it on one corner thus, 0, and holding, 
it at each corner of the end toward me, I held the plate to- 
ward the medium, who placed his hands, the one on the top 
and the other underneath, holding the plate between his 
palms, while I continued to hold on to the corners and never 
let it go from my grasp for one instant, until, to my surprise, 

' Dr. Wills is a clergyman who stands well in his denomination and has an ex- 
tensive reputation for pulpit ability. 



464 



PICTURE RECOGNIZED 



I heard three distinct taps upon the plate; then the medium 
removed his hands and I put the plate at once into the 
developer and developed it myself, no one touching it for an 
instant but myself, neither was it out of my possession for 
one second from the time that I bought it some four blocks 
away until I had it fully developed; and to my astonishment 




Test Photograph taken by Rev. J. T. Wills, D.D. 

there was the face of a lady on it, and that so plain that it 
has been recognized by my daughter as the likeness of a lady 
who was never in California and who died in England several 
years ago. [See Photograph on this page.] 

" After this I gave the medium another test in the same 
manner, and with the result of another face, of an unknown 
man. Then the doctor tried another plate after the same 



"I KNOW NOT" 465 

fashion, and then his bookkeeper another, each with the result 
of another and a different face ; so that in the course of 
about fifteen minutes we had four tests, with four distinct 
and different faces, through the same medium and in the 
same manner. Then I felt compelled to acknowledge that 
by a force not visible to me this work was done ; but how or 
by what power it is done / knozv not. I would like some 
one to tell me how it is done. 

"(Signed) J. T. Wills, D.D. 

" The Abbotsford, San Francisco, Cal. 
" April 9, 1903." 

Report of Experiments by Art/ntr G. Kranse 

"This is to certify that on a certain day in March, 1902, 
Mr. Ed. Wyllie, a photo, medium, called at the office of Dr. 
W. J. Pierce; but not finding him in, he was just on the 
point of leaving when I suggested to him that he place his 
hands on one of several 4X5 Seed's Gilt-edge No. 27 plates, 
which I had had nearly three years in my possession and 
which were bought before I had ever heard of Dr. Pierce, 
Mr. Wyllie, or spirit photography. 

" Mr. Wyllie was reluctant to do so, as he said he had to 
return to his office without delay, but consented ; and, taking 
one of the plates above mentioned (there being no other), we 
went into a dark room, where Mr. Wyllie held the plate not 
over eight or ten seconds, which plate never left my posses- 
sion; two of the corners of which I held, as Mr. Wyllie 
placed his hands thereon. Upon my developing it later there 
appeared the clear features of a lady, a print of which is here- 
with given (see page 466). This plate was not exposed in 
a camera nor have the features been recognized by any one 
so far. 

"On April i, 1903, I was present at the test imposed 
upon Mr. Wyllie, being the bookkeeper referred to in the 
letter of the Rev. J. T. Wills, D.D. I was a witness to all 
that occurred and can fully substantiate all statements made 
by Rev. J, T. Wills, D.D., and Dr. Pierce, and I also heard 
the three distinct taps on the plates on which Mr. Wyllie 
had placed his hands. 

"On the plate held by Mr. Wyllie and myself, the head 
of a lady with closed eyes and a peculiar cap on her head 



466 



MEDIUM CAN'T DO IT 



made its appearance, which face has not been recognized. 
(Print of this lady is herewith given see page 467.), 

" I have never had any reason to believe Mr. Wyllie to be 
other than an honest man, nothing suspicious about his ac- 




Test Photograph taken by Arthur G. Krause, March, 1903 — (p. 463). 



tions, and always ready to submit to any test conditions im- 
posed upon him. I believe Mr. Wyllie does not and can not 
control the power that operates through him, as he is never 
positively certain whether there is or is not anything on the 
plate he places his hands upon. 

"(Signed) Arthur G. Krause. 
" The Abbotsford, San Francisco, Cal. 
" April 1 1, 1903." 



CLOSELY CATECHIZED 



467 



Supplemental Questions which I Submitted to Dr. 
Pierce, and His Answers 

Question i. — "How far did the paper corners in the test of April 20 
separate the plates; and why were these paper corners used; and what 
precaution dicl you take to prevent the medium slipping a paper or some 
print between the plates along their upper edges?" 

Answer. — "Upon measurement I find the thickness of 
the paper (strawboard) corner pieces referred to was exactly 




Test Photograph taken by Arthur G. Krause, March, 1903— (p. 465). 

one-eighth of an inch. Upon reasoning the matter out for 
myself, I arrived at the conclusion that by leaving a little 
distance between the two plates, instead of bringing them 



468 CURIOUS LIGHT EFFECTS 

into direct contact with each other, I should be more likely 
to obtain satisfactory results than would be possible other- 
wise. My object was to provide effectually against the me- 
dium bringing any part of his hands in direct contact with 
the film (sensitized) side of the plate, and in this test I posi- 
tively know it was impossible for him to have done so with- 
out my knowledge. While taking no special precaution to 
prevent his slipping a paper or print between the plates, I am 
confident that he did nothing of the sort, for there was suffi- 
cient evidence to my mind that he merely laid one hand on 
the upper plate and the other on the lower, for the space of 
a few seconds, keeping them in that position quietly, with- 
out further manipulation." 

O. 2. — " In this test did the sensitized surfaces touch so that it was 
impossible for anything to have slipped between.? That is, did you hold 
them in such a way as to press the surfaces together.? Explain just what 
care you took in this test." 

A. — " The only difference between the test of April 22 
[not given] and the one of the 20th of the same month was 
with reference to the fact that I used two sensitized plates 
(both facing inward), instead of one sensitized and one plain 
glass plate, as in the former experiment. In all other respects 
the arrangement was the same, with the exception that I took 
still further precautions in tying the combination together, 
using four pieces of twine instead of two and running the 
same along the plates lengthwise as well as across both ends 
thereof. In this connection permit me to call your attention 
to the fact that, altho the two plates were held tightly to- 
gether during the experiment, not only by the cords with 
which they were tied, but by my two hands as well, as strong 
a light or manifestation of power appeared betiveen one of the 
corner pieces and one of the plates 2iQ 2i'p'i^&2irQd elsewhere at 
that time. See print, which not only shows the light men- 
tioned, but shadow of the straw-board corner piece referred 
to above." [An interesting study, but no face appeared.] 

0. 3. — " Did the medium or his control explain why no picture ap- 
peared in test of April 22 ? " 

A. — "No explanation was asked for by me, nor was it 
volunteered by either the medium or his control. Under the 
conditions imposed, the test was satisfactory and pleasing to 
me." 



MEDIUM'S HANDS CLEAN 469 

Q. 4. — " Were you aware of the possibility of a medium having on 
his arm or other part of his person a picture slvetchedwith acid, and then 
transferring tliis sketch by touching the same with his hand and then 
touching the sensitized plate with his hand? What precautions did you 
take to prevent such transfer being made in your experiments?" 

A. — " My precautions for preventing the medium touching 
the sensitized plate with his hand or any other part of his 
body have already been fully described in my report to Dr. 
Reid, of which you have now a copy, and of which further 
particulars are given in this communication. See above, an- 
swers to Questions i and 2. Replying further to Query 4, 
would respectfully beg to state that I was investigating what 
appeared to come under the name of ' photography,' z.e., the 
appearance of what appeared to be the faces of living persons 
on sensitized photographic plates, which could be ' printed ' 
by exposure to sun or other suitable light, resulting in effects 
warranted to justify this theory. I was not in the least con- 
cerned about sketches made with ink or acid, visible or in- 
visible, nor with wash-drawings, engravings, pencil sketches, 
etc., on ' his arm or other part of his person,' for such things 
had never, in my experience with this medium, been repro- 
duced on any plate held by him in my presence. To all 
appearances they were photographs or reproductions of photo- 
graphs of living persons, exhibiting the proper gradation of 
lights and shadows usual in ordinary photographs." 

Q. 5. — " During the tests did the medium have anything in or on his 
hand or fingers, such as a ring ? " 

A. — " The medium never had anything unusual about his 
hands or fingers, altho he usually wore a couple of small gold 
rings on one of his little fingers. On the occasion of the 
test at my San Francisco office (as well as on one or two 
other occasions), as will be noticed by reference to my report 
to Dr. Reid, it will be apparent that these rings had nothing 
whatever to do with the manifestations under consideration. 
Before making the experiments of April 20 he removed his 
rings when washing his hands, and when leaving the ofhce 
an hour or two later went away without them. Shortly there- 
after I found them where he had left them and took them 
back to him a day or two later. Meanwhile his business of 
taking ' spirit photographs ' evidently went along as usual, as 
he evinced no haste in asking for the return of the rings, 
merely telephoning to inquire whether we had found them." 



470 SUFFICIENT LIGHT TO SEE 

Q. 6. — " Did you observe any light or anything else abnormal about 
the hands of the medium ? " 

A. — "No, I did not observe light or anything abnormal 
about the hands of the medium (except light rappings, sounds) 
on April 20 or 22, or on other occasions, with the excep- 
tion of two or three times. Not to exceed this number of 
times, I did see lights of various shades of color floating 
about the medium, some being so far from him that it would 
have been impossible for him to have manipulated them him- 
self if he had tried to do so. " 

Q. 7. — " Kindly restate the precautions you took to prevent any pos- 
sible tampering with the plates prior to the tests or immediately succeed- 
ing the tests." 

A. — " I do not see how I can add anything to what I 
have already stated herein and in my report to Dr. Reid to 
prove that I have conducted this investigation with the ut- 
most care, guarding against every possible avenue by which 
fraud might enter. My investigations in this particular phe- 
nomenon embrace, not one or two, but many experiments, 
extending over a period of fourteen or fifteen months or 
thereabouts, and on nearly every occasion I took some new 
precaution to guard against possible deception. To describe 
them all would tax my memory and your time perhaps rather 
more than is necessary. I will say, however, that on several 
dates when satisfactory results were had, I positively know 
that no one could have had a chance to handle the plates from 
the time that I took each from the unbroken package as it 
was sent out by the makers until I placed it in the developing- 
dish (after the medium had placed his hands upon it in my 
presence and while I held the end thereof), and watched the 
face of the so-called ' spirit ' slowly or sometimes more 
quickly make its appearance thereon. I repeatedly examined 
the sensitized plate before developing in as strong an orange- 
colored light as possible to prevent ' fogging,' to see if any 
marks, spots, etc., could be detected on the film; but never 
a sign of anything could I see." 

O. 8. — "Were your plates kept where your bookkeeper or other per- 
son or persons could have had access to them ? " 

A. — " I have no reason to doubt the honesty of my book- 
keeper or of any one about the premises where the sensitized 



OF GOOD REPUTATION. 471 

plates were kept, nor was there any reason why any one in 
my employ should endeavor to deceive me in this matter, but 
quite to the contrary. The only one about the premises who 
had any knowledge of photography or knew where the plates 
were kept was my confidential clerk and bookkeeper, and, as 
already stated, I believe him to be a man of integrity and 
worthy of trust. But even with him I did not always go 
about advertising what I was going to do or when I was 
going to do it in the matter of making these tests, and he 
had sense enough to attend to his duties at the office and sim- 
ply assist in these experiments when he was requested to 
do so." 

Q. 9. — " Did you make any examination of the medium's hands and 
clothing immediately before and immediately after the tests?" 

A.^ — •" Of his hands, yes, on numerous occasions ; of his 
clothing, no. I saw no reason for the latter. To have done 
this I should have had to request him to take off every ves- 
tige of clothing, shave off his hair, and seal up his mouth. 
This I considered going a little too far, nor was it at all 
necessary in view of the other precautions I took." 

O. 10. — "Do you know whether this medium has ever been charged 
with trick or fraud, and if so, has any proof been furnished?" 

A.^ — " I never heard any one charge this medium with 
fraud or trickery and never heard of any proof to substantiate 
such charge." 

Q. II. — "What is the reputation of the medium among Spiritualists 
and others who know him in California, as far as you know?" 

A. — " I never heard any one speak ill of him among 
Spiritualists, and only two or three others ever condemned 
him in my hearing, and they did so on general principles, 
simply because the phenomena occurring through him inter- 
fered with their theories and ideas of what could or could 
not be done by or through human agency." 

O. 12. — " Could you clearly see the mednun's hands durmg the tests? 
How strong was the light?" 

A. — " In from six to ten of the experiments made with 
this medium, Mr. Edward Wyllie, the orange- or red-colored 
light in the room was sufficiently strong to distinguish the 



472 UNDER A CRITIC'S GAZE 

medium and other objects; in fact, I used it to see how to 
open the box containing the plates brought by me for the 
purpose, and to do the same up before going out again into 
the daylight." 

A Skeptic's Thinking 

I submitted this series of Dr. Pierce's photographs and 
explanations to a careful critic who is acquainted with the 
photographic art. The following is his report : 

" We know that a figure or photograph is produced upon 
the dry plate by a chemical change in the film. This chemi- 
cal change is begun when the sensitive film is acted upon by 
some agency, usually light. The chemical change is com- 
pleted by the action of the chemicals in the developing-bath 
upon the film already affected by the first agency. We can 
not, of course, eliminate the chemical action from the proc- 
ess. It is not a matter of spirit communication with mortal 
minds ; it is a matter involving chemical action upon miatter. 
We must,- therefore, seek for the cause of this chemical action 
which begins on the sensitive film of the dry plate. 

" The necessary chemical substance to produce this action 
could be brought in contact with the sensitive film by placing 
the hand directly upon the film or by placing another glass 
plate or other substance directly upon the film. If the film 
is covered by a glass plate and so protected from the hand, 
we must eliminate the theory of acids or other chemicals 
upon the hand itself. Then it is necessary to know if the 
clear plate covering the film is perfectly free from the chemi- 
cal substance, and also that nothing can be slipped in be- 
tween the glass plate and the sensitive film. 

" In the ' diagram ' submitted by W. J. Pierce, it should 
be noticed that the dry plate bearing the sensitive film, and 
the glass plate used to cover the film side of the dry plate, 
are separated from each other by straw-board corners. This 
would make it possible to slip something between the plates. 

" It is assumed from Mr. Pierce's report that he not only 
provided and handled the dry plates, but that he also provided 
and alone handled the clear glass plates used to protect the 
dry plates, altho Mr. Pierce does not definitely state this. In 
arranging for such an experiment it were better to bind the 
edges of the plates all around with black paper, in the way 



FRAUD NOT TENABLE 473 

lantern slides are bound. This would give better assurance 
than the eye could give that nothing was slipped between 
the two plates." 

The above and other criticisms I forwarded with as search- 
ing criticisms of my own as I could think of to Dr. Pierce. 
He answered from his London office by the following addi- 
tional experiments, which are certainly marvelous. I can 
not see any escape from accepting Dr. Pierce's conclusion, 
except by disbelief in his integrity. Knowing what I do of 
him, the theory of fraud on his part is wholly untenable. It 
will be observed that in these London experiments Dr. 
Pierce obtained pictures in closed boxes in Ids oivn room on 
his oivii plates with no mortal present but Jiiniself. 

Dr. Pierce's London Experiments 

" London, England, November 26, 1903. 

" To Dr. I. K. F2ink. 

" Dear Sir : I send you a print of a hand and lower part 
of an arm, being the most distinct of three pictures obtained 
on the 8th of the present month, the others being a lady's 
face and a landscape. These pictures were secured in a 
closed box containing six plates (quarter size), in my pres- 
ence, in broad daylight, the medium merely holding the box 
in his hands for about two or three minutes. The box of 
plates was my own and was taken to him for the experiment 
mentioned. I then went into his dark-room and developed 
and fixed the plates myself, never allowing the box to leave 
my possession for a single moment. Upon examining them 
in the light we found that two contained the portrait, two 
the hand and arm, and the balance the landscape. I found 
on experimenting that I could obtain a better print by pa- 
sting the two negatives together for each picture than by 
using them separately, and this has been done in the print 
sent you. 

"Thus you will perceive that, by the above experiment, 
I have fully confirmed (at least to my own satisfaction) the 
genuine character of the photographs obtained in California, 
through the mediumship of Mr. Wyllie, of which you have 
a full report, even going farther than with Mr. Wyllie in 



474 PICTURES IN UNOPENED BOX 

getting favorable results zvitJdn a closed box, the contents of 
which it was a physical impossibility for the medium to 
touch. I may mention, in this connection, that since the 
above experiment was made, an esteemed friend of mine has 
also secured pictures through the same medium, with a box 
of his own plates and under exactly similar conditions." 

In reply to further questions Dr. Pierce wrote me as fol- 
lows : 

" London, January 1 1, 1904. 
" My dear Dr. Funk. 

"... Replying to your queries regarding the experi- 
ments made in London, of which I recently sent you an ac- 
count, would say the box of plates had not been opened by 
me before developing and was not opened by the medium, but 
was simply held between his hands for a few moments, be- 
fore my eyes, then passed over to me, and I immediately took 
it into his dark-room, cut open the box, and developed and 
' fixed ' the plates myself, one at a time. The medium did 
not touch a plate on the film side or any other side until the 
job of developing and fixing had been entirely completed by 
myself. I had previously marked the box with my initials 
and otherwise, so that I know there was no substitution of 
boxes. On Sunday, November 29, I repeated the experi- 
ment, under exactly similar conditions, with, if possible, more 
satisfactory results than in the first instance. 

" My object in sending you an account of one or two 
of my recent experiments here in London was mainly to 
confirm my experiments with Mr. Wyllie in California, of 
which, from beginning to end, I have done my best to fur- 
nish a full and faithful account. It having been remarked 
by several persons that ' it was a pity these pictures could 
not be obtained without the medium being allowed to touch 
the plates at all,' I tried to overcome this objection here in 
London and succeeded, as I think my supplemental report 
to you will fully demonstrate. And now I rest my case. 
You have my report and are at liberty to publish as much or 
as little of it as you choose. You know whether I am a man 
whose word is to be believed. 

"And now, in conclusion, I will add that, as a result of 
my investigations to date, I have become fully satisfied as to 
the genuine character of the phenomenon called psychic or 
spirit photography. This does not mean that I have become 



STILL GREATER MARVEL 475 

a ' Spiritualist,' for such, as yet, is not the case. The ques- 
tion of identity is still unsettled. I do not knoiv any of the 
numerous men, women, and children who have come to me 




Test Photograph taken while the Plate was in the Original Box. 

Inscription on the back of the above photograph written by Dr. Pierce : 
"Obtained in London. England, October 8, 1903, under strictly test conditions, 
within a box holding six sensitized plates : no camera used. The plates were pur- 
chased, developed, and fixed by me, the medium doing nothing except to hold the 
unopened box between his hands for about two minutes prior to the developing." 

in the photographs obtained in the mysterious manner hereto- 
fore described ; but, as before stated, I know the phenomenon 
is true, becmise, in addition to my experiments with the two 
photo mediums referred to in my reports, and as to whose 



476 



MANY PICTURES VERIFIED 



honesty I have no reasonable doubts, I have, since my arrival 
in London, been able to obtain these pictiires, both with and 
zvithout a camera, in the company of a friend, a highly 




I'i.Al \: \ 1 >. i 

Photograph taken bj- Dr. Pierce when alone in his room without camera on a 
plate purchased by himself and developed by himself — as described in his letter 
March 9, 1904— (pp. 477--8). 



respected business man ; and, in addition to this, I have 
myself secured pictures on plates and films, without a camera, 

IN MY OWN ROOM, WITHOUT A MORTAL BEING PRESENT BUT 

MYSELF. For these results I am profoundly grateful to the 
unseen forces about me. 

" I am no ' medium,' at least in the commercial sense of 
the word, but just an indepejidejit investigator of the phenom- 
ena of Spiritualism." 



SPIRIT OBEYS RKaUKST 



477 



Photographs Taken by Dr. Pierce When Alone in 

His Room 

" London, March 9, 1904. 
" My dear Dr. Funk : 

"... With regard to your request that I send you a copy 
of a photograph which I have taken in my own room while 
alone, etc., would say that it is only after much deliberation 




Platk No. II. 

This is the photograph in plate No. I. touched up by pencil to bring- out the 
features more clearly — (p. 476). 



and hesitation that I have, at the last moment, decided to 
comply with your request. I have been reluctant to send 
such a picture for two reasons : 



478 IMPRESSIVE CONFIRMATION 

''First. Because I have as yet obtained none under the 
conditions mentioned sufficiently distinct to make a good 
block for printing purposes. It is only a little over three 
months since I have been able to secure such pictures un- 
aided by a photo-medium, and, therefore, evolution in this 
direction has only just begun in my case, with naturally im- 
perfect results. 

" Second. Because of my dislike to have anything of a 
psychic nature, which has come through myself alone — that 
is to say, in the absence of and without the aid of a 'me- 
dium ' — brought before the public for criticism and, perhaps, 
condemnation by the ignorant or prejudiced. My objections 
thereto were plainly set forth in my last letter to you, as you 
will no doubt remember. 

"The photograph, in duplicate, which I send you here- 
with, is the plainest in outline of several obtained by myself, 
alone, in my own room in the West End of London, during 
the latter part of November, up to about the 20th of Decem- 
ber last. I used quarter size, flat films, which I had pur- 
chased at a shop in London. The box was never opened 
or out of my possession for a single minute, from the time 
of purchase until I made the experiment mentioned in my 
room, and the first film taken from the box and developed is 
the one I now send you the duplicate prints of. No camera 
was used, and it was not ten minutes from the time the film 
was taken from the box until it was developed and in the 
soda-bath. One of the prints I have pencilled out, as you 
will observe, as by so doing the young girl's face can be the 
more readily seen. You may be able to make a somewhat 
satisfactory half-tone block from this print, if it is carefully 
handled. At any rate, it is the best I have to send of those 
that have been obtained under the conditions specified in 
your letter of February 23d." 

"Spirit" Photograph Results Verified by Dr. H. A. 
Reid, President of S. P. R., Pasadena, Cal. 

It will be remembered that Dr. Reid was for years execu- 
tive secretary of the State Academy of Science, Des Moines, 
Iowa, and is a trained investigator of psychic phenomena, and 
has been for a long while associate member of the London 
Society for Psychical Research. 



"NO STONE LEFT UNTURNED" 479 

Dr. Reid has sent me a large number of examples of 
" spirit photographs," which he has investigated and has veri- 
fied until he himself has become perfectly satisfied as to their 
genuineness. I have selected from these examples the fol- 
lowing, quoting from Dr. Reid : 

" Case I. — Mr. A. N. Millspaugh, a mine operator at 
Ballarat, Inyo County, Cal., at my request has given the Pasa- 
dena Society for Psychical Research the following account 
of his experience with Mr. Wyllie : 

" ' My investigation of his work was so thorough, and th-e conditions 
under which the pictures were produced so stringent, as to leave no doubt 
whatever in my mind of their genuineness — or, in other words, that they 
were produced by some unseen agency, and not by any trick or fraud 
practised by Mr. Wyllie. During my first few sittings I received very 
good pictures of relatives who had passed away — one of my grandmother 
being especially good. At that time I felt confident it was merely a 
trick, which I could do as well as Mr. Wyllie if I only knew how. And, 
having had some experience in amateur photography, I decided to go to 
the bottom of it and find out the trick. With this in view, while entirely 
alone in my private oflnce I requested my daughter (deceased) to come on 
my picture, and stated the place and position which I wished her to oc- 
cupy. I then went to the wholesale house and purchased a box of plates, 
and, going to Mr. Wyllie's studio, requested him to allow me to put the 
plate in the plateholder and take them out myself, he doing nothing but 
simply making the exposure — all of which he kindly consented to. I 
took the plate home and developed it myself, getting on the negative just 
exactly what I had asked for in every particular, and which I could swear 
no living person except myself knew. I did this not only once, but I 
have something like two dozen pictures taken under the same conditions. 
I had at that time in my employ a young lady stenographer, who was an 
active member of the Methodist Church, and who is now the wife of a 
leading lawyer of Chicago. She was inclined to doubt that I was getting 
each time just what I asked for; and, to convince her, I made a request 
in her presence for the picture of my daughter to appear with her finger 
on her cheek, and looking at me and smiling. I then took my box of 
plates and went to Wyllie's studio, handling the plate entirely myself. I 
brought it back to my office and allowed her to take it out and develop 
it herself, as she was also an amateur photographist. She found upon 
developing the plate my daughter's picture in exactly the position I 
had requested. This experience convinced her that these pictures were 
not produced through trickery or fraud. She afterward developed sev- 
eral others for me, and was as thoroughly convinced of Mr. Wyllie's 
honesty in the matter as was I myself. 

"' I am not a Spiritualist in the common acceptation of the term, but 
my investigations not only in this line but in others have proven to me be- 
yond any shadow of a doubt that there are unseen intelligences surround- 
ing us, which influence our lives to a greater or less extent.' " 

"Case II. — The following is regarded by Dr. Reid as 
of special value, since Mr. Disler is an experienced pho- 
tographer : 



48o "RESULT SURPRISED HIM" 

"' Los Angeles, Cal. , March 23, 1900. 

"'. . . In company with D. E. Lyons and T. J. Spencer, 
I went to Dewey Bros., photo-supply house. Mr. Spencer 
purchased a box of 4 X 5 dry plates. Then Lyons and I 
went to the photo studio of Edward Wyllie. Upon a short 
interview with Wyllie as to the purpose of our visit and trial 
for pictures, etc., he readily consented to any and all de- 
mands I made of him. Then I proceeded to make a thorough 
examination of his camera, tablet, background, and lens — 
even taking the lens apart. Being myself a photographer of 
thirty years' experience, I left not a stone unturned, as I 
could see, where there could have been any chance for shift- 
ing of plates or any device to trick me. I proceeded to the 
dark-room, and, taking out of the box purchased by Mr. 
Spencer one of the plates, placed it in the holder; and, to 
make doubly sure, I marked the plate so I would know it to 
be the same. Mr. Lyons was in the dark-room with me to 
see the change of plates, and one G. F. Mander stayed in 
the operating-room with Wyllie so he could have no chance 
to do anything on the outside. I brought the plateholder out 
of ihe dark-room, placed it in the camera, and, drawing the 
slide ready for exposure, I sat clown on posing-chair ; and all 
Mr. Wyllie did was to remove cap off lens and time the nec- 
essary exposure. He made two sittings of me. [Both are 
in Dr. Reid's possession.] After this we went to the Plaza 
studio, entirely away from Wyllie 's, and I there developed 
the two exposures made. Imagine my surprise and great 
joy when upon developing I saw the correct picture of my 
spirit-mother and two grandfathers and grandmother and 
control. Dr. Short. I swear this to be a true statement. 

(Signed) " 'J. H. Disler, 

" ' D. E. Lyons. 

" ' I also make affidavit that I recognize the old gentle- 
man, marked " unknown," as Dr. Dodson, whom I have 
known for twenty years. There can be no mistake as to the 
picture being a true likeness of the doctor as he passed from 
this life. T. J. Spencer, 

" ' 238 New High Street, Los Angeles, Cal. 

" ' Subscribed and sworn before me this 29th day of 
March, 1900. Edna Leeser, 

" ' Notary Public in and for Los Angeles County, State of 
California.' 



SALOON'S VARIOUS SPIRITS 481 

'^I talked with Mr. Disler about this case. He said he 
was well versed in the photographic art ; he had followed it 
as a business since 1870, or about thirty years, at Carthage, 
Mo., and Coldwater, Mich. He knew all the tricks of the 
art. He could make photographs himself with ' extra ' 
shadow-faces and spooky-looking figures on them, which most 
people would say were just like the Wyllie pictures; but 
they wouldn't be. He said neither he nor any other pho- 
tographer could produce them by any art or skill or science 
known to the trade, under the same or any similar test con- 
ditions that Mr. Wyllie submitted to; and the affidavit 'we 
made was simply an act of justice and fairness to Wyllie, 
after we had so far suspected him as to impose on him the 
relentless test conditions which we did.' 

" I talked also with Mr. Spencer about the case, as he 
was the prime mover in this rigid test experiment. He had 
believed, and had told it to others, that Wyllie once tried to 
deceive him, by somehow reproducing on a photo of him a 
picture of his deceased sister cut from an old number of 
Mnnscy s Maga::2ne. And he fully expected to prove that 
Wyllie could not get any ' extra' or so-called spirit faces on 
a photo when careful test conditions were applied. He had 
himself privately marked one of the plates and helped to de- 
velop them at the Plaza studio. The result surprised him 
beyond measure. 

" Mr. Spencer is a well-known, keen, practical, every-day 
business man, proprietor and manager of a printing-house 
which does a large amount of legal printing for lawyers of 
the Los Angeles county bar." 

" Case III. — Mrs. Jane M. Samson, of Pasadena, formerly 
resided in Boston, Mass., and was a member of the congrega- 
tion of which Rev. Minot J. Savage was pastor. Mrs. Sam- 
son's husband died in Boston in 1894, and his funeral sermon 
was preached by Rev. Dr. Savage. She is an intelligent 
and reputable lady, and attended years ago some private sit- 
tings for psychical research at which Professor James, Rev. 
Savage, Rev. A. A. Miner, D.D. ,and others were among the 
critical investigators. Some time in April, 1900, she sat 
for a photo at the rooms of Mr. Wyllie, in Los Angeles, he 
knowing notJiing at all of lier former residence, relationship, 
or experiences. A good plate was produced [not given here] . 



482 GHOSTS OF THE LIVING 

She states that the face at her right side is that of her de- 
ceased husband, Edwin Samson ; the one on her left is the 
deceased wife of a brother of hers residing in Nebraska ; 
and the old man below them both is her husband's father. 
She has a brother, C. B. Scott, in the photography business 
at 340 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., and wrote to him 
something about the faces so mysteriously appearing on 
her photograph. Under date of May 6, 1900, he wrote in 
reply : 

"' We have had considerable to do with spirit photographs. Mr. 
Foster, a spirit photographer and medium, has been bringing and send- 
ing photograplis to us to be enameled for the past five years. He has no 
studio, but goes from one place to another, and he sends us work from 
different cities. All of his prints have from two to five spirit faces, and 
we have always been watching, as he sent prints from different cities, to 
see if we could detect the same faces, but we have never been able to do 
so. When he sends them from Philadelphia they are covered with Indian 
and Quaker faces. 1 don't think the spirits have much to do with the 
matter, but tJiere is soiiiething about it tiiat is Jiard to detect.'^ 

" As to the local flavor of the so-called spirit faces from 
Philadelphia, I have another testimony of the same import. 
Mr. Wyllie states that in 1899 he took photos in Sycamore 
Grove, a place in outer Los Angeles which had been for eigh- 
teen years a drinking-saloon, Sunday beer-garden, and gen- 
eral vile resort. This evil use of it had recently been abol- 
ished, and a spiritualist camp-meeting was being held there 
during the month of September. During the first day there 
appeared on many of his plates disgusting pictures of bleared 
and maudlin faces, nude figures, indecent exposures, etc. ; he 
had to destroy such negatives, thus losing both their cost and 
his own time and labor. But this trouble grew less da}^ by 
day, till after the first week he had no more of it. 

" Mrs. Samson being perplexed and in doubt about the 
strange phenomena, on another day bojtgJit some fresJi sensi- 
tized plates Jierself, went with another lady, Mrs. S. L. 
Bettis, to Wyllie's, got him to let her put the plate into the 
camera herself, and then take it away and develop it herself, 
so that he never touched it. Her own face appeared as usual, 
but nothing extra was noticed on it by Mr. Wyllie or any one 
except a few scumbles and patches of light. I also saw the 
unfinished trial print from this negative, and did not observe 
any spirit face on it. She threw it aside as ' no good.' 
Nine or ten months later, while clearing the accumulated 



VISIBLE TO CLAIRVOYANTS 483 

rubbish out of a catch-all drawer, she happened to cast her 
eye upon this old failure picture as it lay bottom end up — 
and lo ! there was a shadow face plainly visible. I and 
others have reexamined it. There was no change in it; but, 
by turning it over, the ' extra ' face was seen at once, tho no 
one has recognized the likeness." 

Case IV. — This one of a number of examples of faces 
of living persons appearing on the plates greatly deepens the 
mystery of spirit photography. 

"Mr. T. J. Spencer, a reputable business man and pro- 
prietor of a printing-house in Los Angeles, had an exceptional 
experience, and gave me the following account of it : 

"'About the last of November, 1899, I sat for a photo at Edward 
Wyllie's studio. And there came on the plate, besides my own picture, 
the likeness of my friend, Mr. Frank B. Harbert, real estate broker, of 
Los Angeles. I had lost a dear little son a short time before, and Mr. 
Harbert as an intimate friend deeply sympathized with me. By reason 
of this sympathetic intimacy between us I happened to be thinking of him 
just at the time I sat for the picture. The affair is a mystery which I can 
not solve. On inc^uiry I learned that Mr. Harbert had never had a pic- 
ture of himself corresponding to this one. He and his friends at once 
recognized it as a correct picture of him at this time, and by recall of 
incidents and comparing hours of day, we ascertained that at the mo- 
ment I was sitting in the photographer's chair he was sitting in the court- 
room of Department One of the Los Angeles County Superior Court 
[Judge B. N. Smith's], at ease, and in a restful and passive position for a 
short time, while a case was going on.' 

" At my earliest opportunity I consulted Mr. Harbert 
about this matter, and he corroborated Mr. Spencer's state- 
ment substantially as given above. He had no other picture 
like it, with same cut of beard, etc. And he said with deep 
earnestness: ' It is the strangest thing I ever heard of! 
How do you account for it .-' ' I replied that I was not trying 
or pretending to account for it ; I was merely seeking to find 
out whether it was really a fact that that thing had occurred, 
or whether there was some mistake in the rumors which I 
had previously heard about it. I said if it was a genuine 
case, the ' accounting for it ' would certainly be worked out 
later. He reaffirmed that the strange thing did actually 
occur, no matter how great a puzzle it might be to scientists 
or others. His wife confirmed his testimony, 

" I also talked with Mr. Wyllie about this case. We 



484 FACSIMILE SIGNATURE 

canvassed different theories about it, and he suggested this : 
' It might be that Mr. Harbert was dozing or half asleep at 
that moment, and his "astral " body which the Theosophists 
tell about went to his friend who was thinking of him just 
then, and produced the picture. ' He did not pretend to 
have any fixed theory, but thought this one might probably 
be as good as any. He was as deeply puzzled and mystified 
with the strange incident as any of us, and wished to know 
if the Society for Psychical Research of London had ever had 
an account of a similar instance anywhere in the world. To 
the best of my knowledge it had not. Mr. Wyllie said that 
in all his experience this phenomenon of a living person 
appearing as an ' extra ' on a plate had occurred only three 
or possibly four times." 

Has the mind the power to project itself, crystallizing 
about itself some objective form as an attenuated body, a 
body with sufficient substance for a camera to photograph.'' 
If so, it would then seem that the mind, soul, or spirit is 
much less dependent on the visible body than has been 
thought heretofore certain by many scientists. If our spirits 
while in the flesh have this power, it is much less hard to 
believe that spirits out of the flesh have the power to make 
themselves visible to clairvoyants, to the eye of the camera, 
and, when particularly strong, to the eye of the average man. 

Personal Identity. — Addenda 

[The following should have been inserted under Personal Identity, 
but was accidentally omitted.] 

Attempted Identification of Spirits by Handwriting 

Spirk Aittograpli of a Leading Clergyman — Bank Officers 
Give Expert Opinion — Autographic Writing for the So- 
ciety for Psychical Research by the Spirits of Frederic 
Myers and Professor Sidgwick — Opinion of Mrs. Sidg- 
ivick — Remarks of Sir Oliver Lodge 

A lady friend, whose integrity none who know her would 
question, has in her family one who has developed medium- 



WAS THIS FREDERIC MYERS? 485 

ship. This medium never practises her mediumship publicly. 
She does not even like to be called a medium, never sitting 
except for members of the family and for a few friends, and 
no compensation whatever is given her. Her mediumship 
is that which is known as automatic writing, that is, a sup- 
posed spirit writes by using her hand. Usually this medium 
when under control writes very rapidly, not stopping to dot 
i's or cross t's or for punctuation or paragraphing. 

What claims to be the spirit of one who was a very promi- 
nent American clergyman has frequently during the past 
year written to me through this medium. He has written me 
letters signed by himself. I am requested by the family not 
to give their own names nor the name of this spirit clergy- 
man, as that might reveal themselves to the public; hence I 
can not give facsimiles of this writing. The '' spirit auto- 
graph signature" is remarkable, being as nearly like the 
autographs of the clergyman written when in the flesh as can 
be. I took to the leading officers of two large banking insti- 
tutions in New York City two copies of the admitted signa- 
tures of this clergyman and two of these " spirit " signatures, 
and these bank presidents were amazed at the similarity of 
the writing, one of them declaring that he " would pay checks 
on such perfect imitations." 

Observe : 

1. This medium is a simple-minded woman and has never 
been known to write in imitation of the writing of others. 

2. The writing is not " traced," and is written in the 
presence of others, very rapidly. 

3. There is no compensation given. 

It is known that Frederic Myers, one of the chief 
founders of the Society for Psychical Research and its leader 
for many years, prior to his death arranged for ways by 
which officers of the society would be able to identify him 
should he find it possible to communicate with them after 
he had reached the spirit world. It is now understood that 
leading officers of this society are convinced that they have 



486 PROF. HYSLOP AND MRS. PIPER 

received communications which they recognize as from him. 
In due time the society will publish all of the facts. In its 
Proceedings, Part 47, issued in January, 1904, there are given 
samples of automatic writing purporting to come from Mr. 
Myers, and this writing is so similar to his that some of his 
closest friends believe it to be genuine. Sir Oliver Lodge, 
the present president of the society, is reported in The Pall 
Mall Magarjine for January as saying : " We are publishing 
shortly a remarkable example of automatic writing which 
some of us believe to be a communication from Frederic 
Myers." Other automatic writing is given in Part 47, pur- 
porting to come from the late Professor Sidgwick, who was 
one of the chief founders of the society and its first presi- 
dent, and, up to his death, its most trusted leader. Of this 
automatic writing Alice Johnson, the private secretary of 
Mrs. Sidgwick, says, " I think that there can be no doubt 
that the resemblance is not accidental " ; and Mrs. Sidgwick 
herself says, " There is an unmistakable likeness in the 
handwriting." Mrs. Sidgwick, it will be remembered, is the 
sister of Prime Minister Balfour, and is herself one of the 
society's most eminent and critical investigators. 

Professor Hyslop Obtains What He Believes to be Strong 
Proof of Personal Identity 

The most detailed scientific and, upon the whole, the most 
convincing proofs of personal identity were secured by Prof. 
James Hervey Hyslop, then (1898-99) Professor of Logic 
and Ethics in Columbia University, New York. He, with 
the help of Richard Hodgson, Secretary and Treasurer of the 
American branch of the Society for Psychical Research, had 
twenty carefully planned sittings with Mrs. Piper, securing a 
full stenographic report of everything said. This full re- 
port, with explanations and comments by Professor Hyslop, 
was published in Xho. Proceedings of the S. P. R., London, 
the whole making a large volume of 640 octavo pages, small 



A STRONG TEST 487 

type, in all about 500,000 words, more than double the size 
of this present volume. 

The extreme scientific care taken by Professor Hyslop in 
these investigations and in the record and publication of 
them should give his record and conclusions great weight. 
He strongly inclines to the belief that the intelligences talk- 
ing were those of his father and of other deceased rela- 
tives. The identity of some of these intelligences he feels 
has been established. It is difficult to go through this 
mass of evidence, weighing all carefully, and resist this con- 
clusion. Detailed information was given again and again 
by intelligences that claimed to be the professor's father and 
other of his relatives about matters in their earthly lives 
which were not known to the professor, and which on inves- 
tigation he found to be facts. He informs me that he asked 
his father to give him a key or watchword by which he would 
be able to identify him in any future communications. He 
did so, and some time afterward the professor was consult- 
ing an intelligence who claimed to be his father through an- 
other medium, and this intelligence identified himself by 
giving him this ivatcJnvord ivliich the pivfessor had told to 
no living mortal. 

We should give weight also to the fact that Professor 
Hyslop was not a Spiritualist (is not now in the ordinary 
sense), was, when he began his investigations through the 
S. P. R., an agnostic concerning all spirit communications, 
and, in fact, a materialist. The fact that these proofs of 
identity have so strongly impressed so skeptical and com- 
petently critical a mind as is Professor Hyslop's is profound- 
ly significant. 



488 SHOULD IT NOT BE TESTED? 

A THREEFOLD REQUEST TO THE PUBLIC 

Cooperation Desired in the Furthering of Psychic Research 

First Request : To help demonstrate whether telepathy 
is true, as Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Alfred 
Russel Wallace, Professor Hyslop, Professor James, and many 
other leading scientists are inclined to think it is, I should 
be glad to have those of my readers who believe themselves 
to be mediumistic, or who visit mediums, to cooperate with 
me in this series of experiments : 

1. On each Sunday afternoon in the months of July and 
October, 1904, at two o'clock New York time, I will write 
down and utter aloud some one definite maxim or thought. 

2. These cooperating persons at this same hour are to 
make themselves as "receptive" or "negative" as possible, 
and write down any impressions entering their minds and 
which they may think to come from me. 

3. These persons are to write to me these impressions. 
It is understood that I will make my part of the experi- 
ments in my study, 195 Washington Park, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Care must be had to make allowance for the difference in 
time between New York and the locations where these other 
experimenters are. Solar time is to be observed, not stand- 
ard time. 

Second Request : I wish each of those of my readers who 
do not deem the subject too uncanny and have the nerve to 
attempt it, and are otherwise willing, to help carry out care- 
fully the following plan in an effort to demonstrate whether 
the dead can communicate : 

1. To now send to me his promise that after his death, 
should he find it possible, he will communicate to me his 
name and a certain watchword or sentence. 

2. This certain watchword or sentence he is now to think 
out and tell it to no living person, but is to write it and 
sign it with his name and seal it in an envelope, and this 



COOPERATION REQUESTED 489 

envelope he is to send to me in a larger envelope. In this 
larger envelope his name and address with date are to be 
given, but not the watchword or sentence. The name of the 
sender should also be written on the outside of the inner en- 
velope. 

3. Should I at any time receive any communication from 
what purports to be a spirit giving the name contained in any 
one of this class of envelopes which I shall have received, 
and also giving a watchword or sentence which the intelli- 
gence will say is in the envelope corresponding with this 
name, I shall then open the envelope and see if the commu- 
nication is true. 

4. In case of my own death I will leave provision to 
have all of this class of unopened envelopes turned over to 
the secretary of The Society for Psychical Research at Bos- 
ton, with the request that he take my place in receiving and 
in verifying communications ii harmony with this plan. 

Third Request : I wish those who are interested in 
psychic research in different communities to form circles 
after the plan described by Rev. Stainton Moses (see Appen- 
dix 3, page 520), and write to me their successes if they 
have any, or their failures if they have failures, after patiently 
making tests at not less than twenty meetings, devoting not 
leas than an hour to each meeting. 

Letters in reply to the above should be addressed to me 
at 22 Upper Mountain Avenue, Montclair, N. J. 



A PRAYER— WHO IS ITS AUTHOR ? 

[This prayer came to me through the automatic writing of a private 
medium. She wrote the prayer as rapidly as her hand could move over the 
paper, and it was sent with the facsimile signature of a celebrated preacher 
of the last century, whose name I am requested not to publish at present. 
We know the marvelous memory that sometimes reveals itself in the trance 
condition ; but I have not been able to recognize this prayer as one that has 
been published heretofore. If any reader of this volume so recognizes it, 
I will regard it as a favor if he notifies me of the fact,] 

" Thou great Spirit of love and justice, it has seemed 
wise to Thee to so ordain that the supremacy of Thine influ- 
ence in this material world should be dependent upon our 
yielding ourselves to Thy commands ; so fill our hearts with 
the sense of our oneness with Thee that we shall be able so to 
incorporate this sense into our every-day acts that each day 
will prove a joy and blessing not only to ourselves, but to 
every one with whom we may be brought into contact, and will 
help us to recognize the interpenetration of Thy holy spirit 
with ours in all His fulness. We thank Thee for the blessed 
privilege of communion with our loved ones who, having passed 
beyond the confines of this material world with its pain and 
narrow existence, have put on more and more of Thine ethereal 
essence, and are rejoicing in far more extended vision, and 
have entered fields of far more extended usefulness. May we 
so progress in perfection from day to day that we shall feel 
the evidence of Thine illuminating power until we are able to 
stand before our fellow men divested of all selfishness, and 
give testimony through our souls to Thine unerring justice. 
Thy will be done in all things, so when this life's pilgrimage 
is ended we may mount as upon eagles' wings as from world 
to world, from sun to sun, until at last we rest in the everlast- 
ing arms, following His steps whose life knew no sin, and who 
stands as ready to intercede for our shortcomings now as when 
He trod this material plane and set an example which nothing 
can take from the memory of earth. Upon this rock help us 
to build our faith, knowing that thus built, the gates of hell 
can not prevail against it. Bless us with Thy continuing love 
and care, and at last receive us within Thy blessed abodes 
where the welcome « Well done ' will send its joyous appeal 
abroad in our purified spirits throughout all eternity. Amen. 
Amen." 

490 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 

I 

COMMENTS BY PSYCHOLOGISTS AND OTHER 

SCHOLARS ON THE FINDING OF *« THE 

WIDOW'S MITE"* 

FORMAL LETTER OF INQUIRY 

Dear Sir: 

Would you do me the very great favor to read the enclosed care- 
fully prepared account of the findingof the mislaid coin, "The Widow's 
Mite," which has attracted during the past few weeks very wide 
attention in America. 

The facts of the incident are given with every care I am 
capable of to avoid all color or suggestion from any preaccepted 
hypothesis. I have requested the press to withhold further comment 
until the facts could be sifted and passed upon by men who are quali- 
fied by their scientific or other training in exact thinking to pass 
judgment on the strange occurrence. Would you kindly answer some 
or all of the questions below, giving such expression of your views as 
you may desire, and return the same to me. 

By so doing, you will greatly oblige 

Yours most respectfiilly, 
April lo, 1903. I. K. Funk. 



*A Professor of one of the European Universities asks me why I did not get a state- 
ment from the medium in reference to this incident. It did not seem to me necessary to do 
so, but after having been asked this question I requested a statement from the medium. I 
received the following from her, duly signed, but with the request that I do not publish 
her name and address, as she is not a professional medium and does not like publicity. 
Professor James H. Hyslop has visited this medium with me, and knows both her name 
and address. 

THE STATEMENT OF THE BROOKLYN MEDIUM. 

" I most solemnly declare before Almighty God that I never knew, before the night of 
the seance at my house in which ' The Widow's Mite ' was talked about, that the Funk 
& Wagnalls Company had borrowed from anybody a coin of this character or of any other 
character. 

"I never knew that they had used such a coin in the making of their Dictionary. 

"I never heard of the coin's whereabouts, directly or indirectly. 

" I do not remember to have ever heard of such a man as Prof. Charles E. West. 

"The entire matter was wholly new to me when I was told about it afterward." 

Signed, 

493 



494 FROM BONN UNIVERSITY 

QUESTIONS ASKED 

First Question: In view of all the facts, wotild you regard fraud 
on the part of some one as a probable solution? 

Second " Is coincidence a solution within the range of prob- 

abilities ? 

Whird " Is there, in your judgment, any reasonable theory 

of the existence of subconscious faculties that 
would explain all of the facts? 

Fourth " Is the hypothesis of spirit communication a possible 

solution ? 
In reply to these questions I received some sixty answers, from 

which I have selected those which fairly represent all. 



From William James, Professor of Psychology 
Harvard University 

(This letter is published in full on page 178, which see.) 

From Max Wentscher, Professor of Philosophy, 
University of Bonn, Germany 

Fraud is not a probable explanation and coincidence is very 
improbable. 

The solution may be looked for in the direction of subconscious 
faculties: the physical phenomena (nerve currents, etc.) accompany- 
ing the subconscious psychical phenomena (especially those related 
to memory) are transmitters of physical effects from one individual 
to the other. 

One cannot exactly prove that the hypothesis of spirit communi- 
cation is impossible. But it is much too adventurous and is too far 
removed from all facts and relations scientifically demonstrated to 
be adhered to merely because one cannot find some other satisfactory 
explanation. There are still many things that we do not at this 
hour know. 

Prom Alfred Russbl Wallace, English Scientist 

Certainly not as to fraud, and coincidence is totally out of the 
question. 

Nor do I think the theory of the subconscious self can explain this 
incident. Subconscious self is a theory only, and not only not proved, 
but quite as difficvilt to prove as the action of spirits, and more improb- 
able. 

To me the hypothesis of spirit communication is not only possible, 
but the only probable solution. 



FROM PROF. LADD, YALE 495 

From George Trumbull Ladd, Professor of Philosophy, 
Yale University 

Every expert investigator of such phenomena knows that nothing 
is more difficult or requires more of the trained skill of the specialist 
than the ascertainment of the actual and the important facts bearing 
upon an attempt at explanation of so-called "occult" psychoses. 
Until he is satisfied that he is in full possession of those facts, no 
properly cautioiis psychologist would venture to put forth an explan- 
ation. 

In this particular case, some of the facts which you evidently regard 
as most mysterious and difficult to explain seem to me quite in accord 
with our most ordinary experiences. Other alleged facts in your 
statement, which are assumed to need no particular verification, seem 
to me most doubtftil, and most likely to turn out false assump- 
tions, mistaken impressions, lapses of memory — in a word, not facts 
at all. Again, very cardinal facts, as they must have actually 
occurred, do not appear anywhere in the evidence as you present it. 

I shall doubtless stirprise you when I say that this case, as it is 
presented in this fragmentary and rather superficial way, does not 
seem to me likely to prove especially reixiarkable or difficult of solu- 
tion, if it could be subjected to prolonged expert investigation. Give 
some one accustomed to such psycho-physical diagnosis a free hand, and 
I venture to believe that its seeming mysteries would ultim.ately be dis- 
closed. 

As to the request for explanation: You will readily see my 
reason for declining to decide among a number of different explana- 
tions; especially when some of these explanations are such as I have 
thus far seen no adequate reason for taking into the list of acceptable 
hypotheses, not to say established psychological principles. On the 
one hand I do not know what needs to be explained; I do not know 
what the case actually was, what were the facts, all the facts, and 
nothing but the facts. On the other hand, I am not as yet a convert — 
even to the extent of holding that they are scientifically credited 
hypotheses — to either telepathy or spiritualistic communications. 
The scientific attitude, as I understand it, requires me to be genial 
and yet cautious with reference toward all observations of so-called 
occult phenomena; but also to be sparing of new hypotheses and 
patient and persistent in extending to such phenomena the princi- 
ples of explanation which have best stood the test of our past experi- 
ence, and which are likeliest to continue to bear the test of our new 
experiences. Perhaps I might venture to compare my attitude 
toward the theories of telepathy or spiritism, to the attitude of those 
friends of mine, who are experts in physics, toward radium or the 
Roentgen rays. 

But as I have already indicated, I very much doubt whether the 
case of "The Widow's Mite" would not easily lend itself to solution, 



496 FROM PROF. YOUNG, PRINCETON 

if the problem it proposes were undertaken by a trained investigator, 
with an absolutely free hand. For he would know about the hyper- 
aesthesia, and the extreme suggestiveness, and the only half-conscious 
and almost involuntary trickiness of self-induced hypnosis ; about the 
astonishing feats of memory that rest upon absolutely forgotten 
bases of sense-impressions, and the confusions of intention and expec- 
tation with memory; about the strange mixtures of honesty and 
fraud — more or less unintentional — which are tolerated in the mental 
activities of good people; about the almost limitless possibility of 
correct guessing, in view of very insufficient data, which may be culti- 
vated by some persons; about the strong but unrecognized influence 
of selective attention (prevalent as it is, in the most scientific circles), 
where there is a preferred form of theory to be established; — and, 
indeed, about a number of other psychological principles which, while 
they dominate our daily living, do not ordinarily combine in such a 
manner as to seem to make either the telepathic or the spiritualistic 
hypothesis necessary. 

Nevertheless, I should be the last one dogmatically to affirm that 
modem psychology knows enough about these principles or about 
all its now accepted principles to render forever unnecessary any quite 
completely new points of view. 

From Sydney Young, Professor of Chemistry, Univer- 
sity College, Bristol, England 
The fraud explanation does not seem probable, nor do I hardly 
think that coincidence can explain. Some of the facts do not appear 
to be explicable by the theory of subconscious faculties. 

I see no reason why the hypothesis of spirit coinmunication 
should be dismissed as absurd, but the question is such a difficult 
one that I think much raore evidence will be required before it can 
be definitely accepted. 

From C. A. Young, Professor of Astronomy, Princeton 
University 

I have read carefully your description of " The Widow's Mite " inci- 
dent, but have such an inconquerable distrust of all phenomena 
exhibited under conditions of semi-darkness, etc. — conditions which 
so easily lend themselves to deceit, and have often been known to 
do so — that I do not care to attempt to deal with this case. I am too 
obstinately prejudiced, so that it is much easier for me to believe that 
we have to do with a trick or delusion of some kind than that Mr. 
Beecher's spirit should really busy itself in such a manner; or even 
that thought can be transferred in the way necessary to explain the 
phenomena. 

May I venture to suggest a dotibt that previous knowledge about 
the coin was so narrowly limited as you think. I don't know how 
many proofreaders and engravers may have been interested in the 



FROM TORONTO UNIVERSITY 497 

matter and learned something about it (a little copper coin like that 
valued by its owner at $2,500 naturally, would be interesting); nor 
how many of Prof. West's family and friends may have had some 
knowledge of the loan, and missed the coin from its place in Prof. 
West's collection. I don't suppose that there was any special pains 
taken to make the loan and use of the coin in the Dictionary a secret. 

From Professor A. Kirschmann, Director of the Psycho- 
logical Laboratory, and Professor of Philosophy 
at the University of Toronto. 

NOTES ON THE NARRATIVE 

1. It seems to me very questionable that one should be able to dis- 

tinguish in a single evening as many as twenty voices without the 
use of the corroborative evidence of the sense of sight to keep 
the individuals apart. 

2. This does not exclude assistance by tricks of ventriloquism. 

[Possible, but extremely unlikely, that you would find a most 
accomplished ventriloquist in an old lady of sixty-eight years, tmedu- 
cated, and exhibiting her rare art every week for years without the 
charge of a penny. I know what ventriloquists are, having seen 
the best that come before the public. I. K. F.] 

3 . There is no such thing as ' ' moral certainty. ' ' I suppose the author 

simply wants to say that he believed in the veracity of the meditmi. 
[I mean the certainty we reach through the weighing of probabili- 
ties — distingmshing it from mathematical certainty. I. K. F.] 

4. It seems the spirit of a child, who died at the age of seven years, 

will forever remain seven years old. 
[After reading this letter I put a question covering the point to 
this "control." She answered, "lam a full-grown person. But when 
I come back here to my father I wish him to recognize me as I was 
when I left earth, and so choose to bring about me my former con- 
ditions of life. Spirits have this power." I. K. F.] 

5. Plymouth Church seems to have nothing to do with the affair. 

Here the spirits were mistaken. 

6. It is not clear whether this answer is intended for: "The black 

coin is the true widow's mite," or, "The black coin is the one 
borrowed and not returned." 
[I understand it as the one borrowed and not rettimed. I. K. F.] 

7. Why not, if he knew everything else about the coin? It would 

be necessary to ascertain whether the collection had ever been in 

Connecticut. 
[A fair criticism. The collection has not been in Connecticut as 
far as I am able to discover. The present whereabouts of the collec- 
tion is not known, as it was ptirchased by some unrecognized person 
who was purchasing for an unnamed collection. I. K. F.] 



498 KEEN CRITICISM 

8. Did they see the envelopes only, or did they see the coins? or did 

they read on the envelope that it contained the "Widow's Mite?" 

9. But Mr. Roney was acquainted with the medium. Without 

reflecting on the character of Mr. Roney, whom I do not know, 

I must state that his sworn statement is rather vague and 

indefinite. It doesn't say that Mr. Roney had no knowledge of 

the coin collection in question and of the fact that a certain coin 

was missing. Neither does it state that Mr. Roney had no 

communication with the medium, or somebody of her party, 

about the collection or the missing coin. 

[Mr. Roney, when shown this, adds to what he has already said : "I 

had no knowledge whatever of the coin collection ; never had heard 

of it, never had a word about this borrowed coin with the medium 

or with any other person before the talk by " George " that evening, 

had never heard that the coin in the Dictionary illustration had been 

borrowed. I thought the illustration had been made from a 

picture." I. K. F.] 

IN ANSWER TO THE QUESTIONS 

First Question : Fraud is by no means excluded. If the coin, 

valued at $2,500, was "out of its place," the owner certainly 

made a note of the loan of such a valuable piece. He may have 

forgotten about the affair, but the said note either filled the 

vacated place in the collection or was attached to the catalogue 

of the collection, when the latter was sold for $17,000. Thus, 

friends and visitors of the owners, who were interested in the 

collection, may have seen the slip and even noticed the name of 

the person to whom the coin was loaned. 

[" Mr. West says if such memoranda had been made by his father 

he would have known of it at the time and afterwards, for his father 

closely consulted him in these things. After his father's death he 

was his executor, and no record of any kind in reference to the coin 

or of its having been loaned was found. It is, hence, of no purpose, 

as suggested below, to trace the coins since their sale, as there was 

no mention made of this particular coin in the catalogue of coins sold 

or otherwise at that time. It was wholly forgotten. I. K. F.] 

In order to exclude every possibility of fraud in this direction 
it would be necessary to trace the whereabouts of the collection to its 
present owner, which has not been done. 

To the many sworn statements, attached to Dr. Funk's report, 
should be added one by the medium herself, in which she assures us 
that she had, previous to the evening of that remarkable 
seance, no knowledge whatever of the coin and the collection, the 
loan to Dr. Funk and the Dictionary, and that relations between 
Mr. Beecher and Dr. Funk were not suggested to her by remarks of 
Mr. Roney or of any other visitor of the meetings. 
[See foot note, page 493.] 



FRAUD PROBABLE 499 

Second Question : "Coincidence" is always a statement only, never 
an "explanation." In other words, facts can never be explained. 
We "explain" only relations of facts (existences) and even then 
explaining can never mean more than tracing unknown and 
complicated relations back to known and simple ones. The last, 
*. e., the ultimate and absokitely simple relations (mathematical 
axioms) cannot be explained. The question of coincidence is 
really in last instance the problem of reality. 

Third Question : By the subconscious can, of course, only be under- 
stood that of which we are conscious, but to which we do not or 
cannot pay attention. The unconscious can never be a matter 
of knowledge, for the first condition for knowledge is conscious- 
ness. 
This question really deals with the problem of telepathy. In 
telepathy I could never see a greater enigma than in any physical 
force acting at a distance. We have light, heat, gravity transmitted 
through space. We have wireless telegraphy. Why, then, should it 
be impossible or even improbable that some vibratory motion is 
emanated from more or less agitated brain cells. Such "brain- 
waves" might be propagated through space unnoticed and im trace- 
able, causing disturbance or change only in such brains as are of 
exactly equal ttming, and thus form a proper receiver. 

Fourth Question : The spirit hypotheses is the poorest of all. It 
assumes most pitiful conditions for the spiritual life of the 
deceased. They are complete slaves of the meditim, compelled to 
rap at tables, to phosphoresce, to write and speak (and, indeed, 
always in the same defective grammar and orthography as the 
medium) and to perform sleight-of-hand tricks which a fair 
magician at a variety show usually perfoi-ms better. They seem 
to retain the age at which they died and to adapt their intelli- 
gence to the horizon of the medium. They seem to be quite 
adverse to the condition of exact scientific experiment and per- 
form their tricks only when there is a loophole left for fraud. 
The present case forms no exception as long as we have no proof 
that fraud was absolutely exckided. 

Summing up, I may say: Although I think everything is possible 
that does not contain a mathematical contradiction, I would be 
inclined in the present case to prefer as a probable explanation- 
"Fraud." 

From , Professor of Psychology in University 

[The following is from a well-known professor in one of our largest 
universities, who requests the withholding of his name, saying : 

" I do not msh to be quoted, as in my state of mind I do not care 
to seem too dogmatic."] 



500 SUCCESSIVE CONSCIOUSNESS 

I am not a spiritualist, never consulted a medium, and am satis- 
fied that I shall live after death, and have no interests, therefore, in 
any new objective proof. But as a matter of science, I am inter- 
ested and regard your experience as very curious, to say the least. 
I hope you will push yotir researches to ascertain, if possible, any 
weak link in the chain of facts or absence of any Unk. 

First Question: I shoxild eliminate fraud. 

Second Question: I should not explain as coincidence. The proba- 
bilities are almost infinitely against coincidence. The explosion 
of a type foundry might possibly in infinite time compose the 
Iliad, but the probabilities are infinitely against this result. 

Third Question: As to the third hypothesis, the experiments and 
studies of men like McPierre Janet opens up a wide field of 
investigation in what he denominates la principe de la desagr6- 
gation psychologique. L'Automatisme psychologique, double 
personality, etc., are terms that cover a great number of curious 
phenomena. Enough seems to be known about so-called sub- 
liminal consciousness, and successive personalities to justify a 
suspicion that an experience like this one. (See accounts of 
double consciousness of Felida X the three or four of Leonie.) 
I should reject doctrine of multiple personalities, and speak of 
successive consciousness, of the "Moi." 
Adverse (i) All these psychologic facts are too new and obscure 

to receive any scientific explanations as yet — not yet scientific. 

(2) Mundane telepathy may be scientific. The cases of extra- 
mundane telepathy cannot be explained, if there are such cases. I 
have no personal experience, but the evidence from so many observers, 
scientific minds as well as literary, force a candid mind to hold his 
judgment at least in suspense. 

(3) The explanation by simple mundane telepathy seems to pos- 
tulate a capacity almost omniscient on the part of the sitter : I should 
from scientific point of view think extra-mundane communication 
the least miraculous. The wide range of simple mind-reading, 
in case of Hodgson with Mrs. Peper, seems more of a miracle than 
extra or transmundane communication. Let one take his choice. 

(4) One who believed that Jesus materialized (passing through 
shut doors — suddenly appearing and vanishing, at one moment 
recognizable, at another not recognizable) — one who accepts an 
objective presentation of Jesus to his followers, cannot, a priori, say 
that there can be no other objective presentations (voices, etc.), if 
the zeit-geist, skepticism, despondency, desire for evidence of another 
life render such a manifestation necessary. What Max MuUer and 
others mean by spiritual objectivity means either transmundane 
communication or mere subjective illusion. Subjective states which 
happen to 500 disciples seem more difficult to believe than an objec- 
tive presentation or materialization. All theories of a real presenta- 



FROM RUSSIAN UNIVERSITY 501 

tion of Jesus must be given up, or any a priori judgment as to trans- 
mundane intercourse being impossible must be rejected as irrational. 

A thoughtful man must avoid a priori judgment and humbly 
accept evidence. Evidence must be personal to be convincing. I 
wait — am willing to receive it. So far, I have never happened to 
experience what you have. It is an age of intense anxiety respecting 
a life after this. Ten thousand experiences are given. It would 
seem incredible that all men who attest these transmundane com- 
munications are incompetents, cranks, or lovers of fraud. "Don't 
know" at present — but I am ready for proofs. 

Be kind enough to regard this too long statement as CONFI- 
DENTIAL. I do not care in my present state of mind to dogmatize. 

From A. Sadowsky, Professor of Physics, Imperial Uni- 
versity of Jurjev, Russia 
Neither fraud nor coincidence come within the range of proba- 
bilities. I am inclined to say yes to the hypothesis of subconscious 
faculties. 

From Sir William Crookes, English Scientist 
I have taken no active part in the spiritualistic movement for 
nearly twenty-five years, and do not feel that I can do justice to this 
curious incident by giving an opinion. All that I can say is that the 
incident as related does not differ in principle from many other simi- 
lar incidents which have come under my notice, and in which I have 
every confidence that fraud did not play any part. 

[Mr. Crookes says that he has no reason to change the opinions 
which he expressed years ago about spiritualism and which are freely 
quoted in this volume. I. K. F.] 

From Frank Chapman Sharp, Professor of Philosophy, 
University of Wisconsin 

My reply will take the form of an answer to this question: Sup- 
pose Mr. Beecher intended to convince the public of the reality of 
present communication between the dead and the living, did he use 
a method which allowed of no escape from the conclusion he intended 
should be drawn? 

Whether fraud is a probable explanation would require an intimate 
acquaintance with your employees to answer properly, also a dis- 
cussion of all the valuable evidence of alleged communications other 
than this. I will, therefore, undertake no more than to say that 
fraud is a possible explanation (a) on the part of the cashier; (b) on 
the part of Mr. Roney; and that Mr. Beecher has not devised an 
experiment against which criticism covdd not properly be turged. 
(a) We may suppose the cashier, after years of forgetfulness, finds the 
coins in the safe. Within a few weeks or months he finds throiagh 
a chance remark of Mr. Roney's, or otherwise, that you are attending 



502 FROM WISCONSIN UNIVERSITY 

spiritualistic meetings. He goes to the parties and supplies them 
with the interesting information which you receive. If he had for- 
gotten the name of the owner of the coin, that would account for the 
failure to get the name. If he later happened to remember the 
owner was connected with some woman's school, this information 
would, naturally, appear at the second meeting, (b) Mr. Roney may 
have known of these facts when they occurred, and happened to 
remember them. Suddenly an opportunity ofifers to use them, 
which he accepts. This theory assumes that he also knew the coins 
had not been returned. This would probably mean collusion either 
with the cashier or one of the assistant cashiers. If you ask under 
(a) above, why didn't the cashier return the coins immediately upon 
discovery, the answer is obvious if you have been in the habit of 
attending such meetings for some time. It is not without the range 
of possibilities that these coins were discovered only after his dis- 
covery that you were attending these particular meetings. Collusion 
between Mr. Roney and the cashier clears up all real difficulties. I 
cannot think any investigation, however careftd, which any one could 
make afterwards establishes the proposition that no communication 
could have taken place between the Brooklyn family and an employee 
of your firm. In a great city, such comm.iinication, if it takes place, 
is almost certain to remain hidden. Nor can I think a proof of 
ordinary business integrity on the part of your clerks would preclude 
the possibility of fraud in this instance. The history of "pious 
frauds," ancient and modem, shows that commercial integrity and 
real ptirity of purpose can exist alongside of this form of trickery. 
That a man, for example, antecedently convinced of the immortality 
of the soTil and of the value of this belief to society might conceivably 
go to any length in order to convince others of the truth. A practical 
joke is also a possible motive. 

Coincidence is not a solution to be considered. It is out of the 
question. 

In a second letter, Professor Sharp says: 

You will, perhaps, pardon me if I repeat one statement which 
explains the apparently ultra-skeptical attitude of several persons, 
myself included. 

We cannot sit before every fact without preconception. On the 
contrary, the whole advance of science has meant persons getting 
hold of the right preconception and leaving no stone tmtumed till 
they had shown their fact to be explicable by their theory. Of co\irse 
we need flexibility and openmindedness. But the right road is here, 
as usually true, a middle way between two extremes. 

I think, then, the investigator of the occult is justified in assuming 
as a working hypothesis that the "natural" phenomena that have 
explained so many facts will explain these also, and that before he 
can give up this theory he must have facts which he sees can be 



FROM JOHNS-HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 503 

explained in no other way and that such facts cannot be admitted 
into the body of science until they appear to all observers to be 
explicable in but one way. While I can well understand, therefore, 
your own confidence that you have not been tricked by some of the 
various parties who have been connected with this incident, I think 
you ought not to expect others to close their eyes to that possibility 
vintil either in this case or in some similar one this has been demon- 
strated to be inadmissable by evidence which any one can examine 
for himself. 

As to subconscious faculties, I will not undertake to say more 
than that telepathy is a possible explanation, if the following may 
be supposed to be the real history of the case: Some time after the 
coins passed out of your hands, you asked the cashier if he had 
returned them. He replied, "No, I had forgotten all about them. 
They are now in the safe, etc." You made up yoiu* mind a second 
time to ask the same question, feeling some doubt whether the neglect 
had not continued. It slipped your mind when you went to the 
office. You thought of it at home and felt uneasy about it, and so 
on, until the matter dropped entirely from your mind. It is perfectly 
possible that all this may have happened and yet now have dropped 
from your conscious memory never to rettirn. All the time, however, 
this may have been in your subconscious memory. If it was, and if 
there be any such thing as telepathy at all, then, as you must know 
from the literature of the subject, telepathy would bring it to light. 
This very incident affords good evidence that what was once in 
consciousness may be irrevocably lost to conscious memory. The 
chances are enormous in favor of the possibility that the United 
States Mint in 1893 wrote you that the black coin was the genuine 
one. Whoever read the letter knew at the time which was the genuine 
coin. Then by one of those unaccountable slips which happen to 
every one once in a lifetime, the association lines got crossed and, 
perhaps, half automatically, the order was given to make a cut of 
the lighter coin. The matter then being dismissed from the mind, 
it was never mentally corrected. Professor West's failure to ask 
you for the coin shows also how complete oblivescence can be. 

I think there is nothing in this or any other incident I know of 
which cannot be explained by other hypotheses than the spiritistic. 

Prom Edward H. Griffin, Professor of History of 
Philosophy, Johns- Hopkins University 
It is certain that fraud is not a probable explanation. The diffi- 
culties on that hypothesis are almost insuperable; nor is coincidence 
a solution within the range of possibility. Nor can I regard the 
theory of subconscious faculties as a reasonable explanation. 

The triviality of so-called "spirit communications" is a fatal 
objection to my mind to the spirit hypothesis. Why should great 
men lapse into such imbecility? If the future life is so far inferior 



504 FROM PAUL CARUS 

to the present one, who need take the trouble to confirm belief in it? 
If I were compelled to choose a hypothesis, it would be that of fraud, 
but I am inclined to give the problem up without solution. The 
narrative is an interesting one. If, on further reflection any helpful 
idea occurs to me, I shall write fxirther about it. 

From Paul Carus, Editor of The Open Court and the 
Monist; Author of The Ethical Problem; The 
Soul of Man; The Dawn of a New Era; Kant 
and Spencer; Whence and Whither: an inquiry 
into the Nature of the Soul, its Origin, and its 
Destiny, etc., etc., Chicago 

On my first perusal of the description of this incident the report 
struck me as a remarkable fact which would go far to be counted 
as favorable evidence in favor of a mysterious connection between 
the dead and the living of whatever sort it may be. A second perusal 
took away a great deal of the mystery and the more I think of it the 
less strange the story appears to me. The most weighty objection 
that I can find against the credibility of the story that indicates spirit 
communication is the fact that many mighty problems could be 
solved, and unquestionably would have been solved by spirit commun- 
ication. - Wherever do you find the solution of a murder or any great 
political or social event brought to a crisis by spirit commvmication ? 
All such commimications are concerning trifles, and altho the "Widow's 
Mite" affair refers to an object valued at $2,500, it is nothing in 
comparison with great questions in which frequently the fate of 
many millions is involved; and yet, wherever we have access to the 
full concatenation of facts, spirit communication ceases. Accord- 
ingly, I would answer your questions: 
I. That fraud seems to me excluded or highly improbable in the 

story which you relate, 
n. Coincidence may very well serve as a solution of the strange 

events, at least in part. 
3 Subconscious faculties may have done their part to bring about 

some of the results. 
4. I would resort to the explanation of spirit communication only if 

all other theories fail. In the present case I would not venture 

an opinion as to the nature of the facts luiless I could have the 

chance of cross-examination of the several parties concerned 

in it. 
No doubt it is one of the most remarkable cases I have ever met 
with, especially as the facts are well authenticated by trustworthy 
witnesses. But there are a few more points not mentioned in your 
report which might be of importance in forming an opinion. What- 
ever the significance of the case may be, it is an interesting incident 
of an apparently inexplicable phenomenon. 



FROM HOLLAND UNIVERSITY 505 

From I. J. DE BussY, Professor of Ethics and Religious 
Philosophy, University of Amsterdam 

Neither fraud nor coincidence are probable explanations. There 
is a possibility of coincidence if the family name, Beecher, was in 
the circle of acquaintances of the medium. 

The most acceptable supposition is the existence of subconscious 
faculties ; but my opinion concerning these faculties is hard to explain. 
The explanation of the facts may be sought in the hidden conscious- 
ness of Dr. Funk. 

I am an unbeliever in spirit communication of the kind here inten- 
ded, and hence regard the hypothesis to be one that cannot be accep- 
ted. 

From Walter D. Scott, Professor of Psychology, 
University of Chicago 

I think that no fraud was intended, but the evidence is not at all 
conclusive, and it all may be a huge joke. Coincidence will not 
explain all the facts. I do not regard the existence of subconscious 
faculties as an explanation. Self-deception, coincidence, partial 
memory, are elements which I shovdd look to for explanation. I 
should want further testimony as to what you said to the mediuni_ 
I am not willing to trust j'-ovir memory. I suspect that you said 
more to the medium than you remember or than the others noticed. 
In fact, your No. 12 of "Points to Observe" is in direct contradiction 
to your statement as given above. 

[I am at a loss to tmderstand what Professor Scott means. There 
was not a whisper of any kind that touched in the remotest way this 
subject before the direct inquiry was made from the cabinet. Nor 
did I trust wholly to my memory, as I wrote down the next day the 
facts and afterwards consulted others who were present and heard 
what was said. I. K. F.] 

From Collins Denny, Professor of Philosophy, Vander- 
bilt University 

Before anything that would meet the reqmrements of a scientific 
explanation can be offered there must be an assurance that all the 
facts are correctly stated, and I do not feel at all sure that the facts 
have been exhausted. 

Again, the explanation you suggest is based on the supposition 
that conscious life continues after death. I believe this, but I do 
not think I could demonstrate it. It remains a supposition. 

Secondly, there must be some ground for the conviction that 
those who have died can communicate with those who are living on 
the earth. Now, any explanation that would accept any one of your 
interrogatories assumes both of these conditions. Or, perhaps, I 
had better rule out fraud and coincidence from this statement, as these 
would not necessitate the truthfulness of these suppositions. At 



506 FROM VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY 

any rate, I do not feel sure that all the facts necessary for a scientific 
explanation have been stated, for my understanding of an explana- 
tion is that it is a reference to a cause, or a law, or a class. Certainly 
this is the statement made by the leading authorities who treat of 
scientific methods. 

While I caimot accept any explanation you suggest, I have no 
explanation of my own to offer for these and similar instances. Cer- 
tainly the view of subconscious mental activities is to me erroneous, 
tho I notice in your statement that you speak of your subconscious 
memory and the subconscious memory of yoiir cashier. Now, the 
existence of any subconscious mental states is an hypothesis to 
account for facts that cannot otherwise be explained, and logical law 
condemns a cause that is not a vera causa; by which I mean a cause 
not otherwise known to exist, and subconscious mental states are 
not known to exist otherwise than that they are asstuned to explain 
phenomena akin to those you present. In order to raise an hypothesis 
to the height of proof it has been known as long ago as the time 
when Sir Isaac Newton wrote that not only must all the facts be 
accounted for by the hypothesis, but that no other hypothesis can 
account for the facts; and the hypothesis of subconscious mental 
states fulfils neither of these suppositions. That I am correct in 
this statement about hypotheses and proof may be easily seen by 
consulting Mill's System of Logic. Many of the facts to be explained 
by subconscious mental activities can be and have been explained on 
other hypotheses wherein a vera causa has been referred to; as, for 
instance, acquired dexterities and habits are now accotuited for by 
referring them to reflex action. Spontaneous ordering of thoughts 
has been accounted for by referring them to unconscious cerebration, 
brain action wherein only the result, not the process, of the brain's 
movements, comes into mind; and whether we admit the existence 
of unconscious cerebration or not, at least this is an hypothesis equally 
as good as that of subconscious mental activities. Lost links in 
memory have long since been explained otherwise than bv reference 
to subconscious mental activities; hence, to my mind, all mental 
states are conscious states, consciousness being essential to mind. 
Certainly, if there be subconscious states, we cannot be said to be 
conscious of them, for this would be a contradiction in terms. 

This very inadequate statement of subconscious mental activities 
may serve to show why I could not accept any explanation that 
assumed the existence of such activities. 

One feature about such phenomena as you present that always 
puts them under suspicion with me is the curtains and the darkness 
that seem to play a part in every one of which I have heard. 'Hovf\ 
I can see no reason why (on the supposition that those who have 
died can communicate with those who are living) they should need 
any such adjuncts as cttrtains and darkness. We can commimicate 



FROM THOMSON J. HUDSON 507 

with each other without anj?^ such intermediaries as these, and a 
man who has been freed from many of the clogs from which we suffer 
ought certainly to have as easy communication as we have one with 
the other. 

I fear this statement, unsatisfactory to me, may be equally or 
more unsatisfactory to you; but, in dealing with such phenomena as 
life presents to us, I have been forced to bring my pace into accord 
with the slow movements of Aristotle, Bacon and Newton. The 
whole history of philosophy has been strewn with the wrecks of 
hasty generalizations and explanations that break down under the 
strain of the facts of life. 

From James H. Hyslop, late Professor of Logic and 
Ethics, Columbia University 
This case, certainly, represents one that has very possible claims 
to supernormal knowledge, to say the least of it. I see no way to 
impeach it positively. I could imagine a theory to explain it without 
supposing the supernormal; bvit I would have no possible evidence 
in favor of what I can imagine. The consequence is that I must 
treat the incident as I do all such cases — to suspend judgment and 
pronounce no positive opinion one way or the other. Besides, it is 
not wise to base a large theory on a single incident of the kind, no 
matter how much we are puzzled to defend an ordinary explanation. 
A large theory must have a large and complex mass of facts upon 
which to depend. I think you have fairly stated the alternative 
explanations, and have also assumed a properly non-committal atti- 
tttde toward them. The incident is, certainly, well calculated, in all 
its psychological features, stiperficially at least, to prove the identity 
of Professor West, and probably Mr. Beecher, and it is that which 
interests me in it. But I could wish that the skeptic could not pro- 
pose this and that "possibility" which we cannot refute, even tho 
we do not beheve it. If there was no possible way for the medium 
to have ascertained the fact, the incident is, certainly, one of the 
most remarkable that I have met with. 

From Thomson J. Hudson, Author of "The Law of 
Psychic Phenomena," etc., Detroit, Mich. 
My answer to the third question will dispose of all the rest. This 
third question asks whether there is any reasonable theory of the 
existence of subconscious faculties that will explain all the facts in 
this case. My answer is "yes." I regard telepathy as affording a 
perfectly easy explanation of all that appears mysterious in the case. 
The answers given by the "control" to your questions are just such 
as might be reasonably expected from a fairly competent psychic or 
telepathist. The questions which the control failed to answer, on 
the other hand, are just such questions as ordinary telepathists fail 
to answer ; not that they are not within the range of telepathic possi- 



5o8 FROM CINCINNATI UNIVERSITY 

bilities, but that they require exceptionally high telepathic powers. 
In point of fact, I do not regard the case as being entitled to be called 
a test case. It belongs to the ABC of what spiritists regard as test 
questions, but which, in reality, have no scientific significance or 
evidential value. 

It would require considerable space to give an explanation of the 
reasons for my belief. If you desire such answer for any special piu:- 
pose, as for publication in a symposium, I should be very glad to 
write out the same, and will say in advance that I shall be able to 
make it perfectly clear to the tmprejudiced mind that neither of the 
theories embraced in the other three questions are either necessary or 
possible solutions. I await your reply before proceeding to give my 
reasons in full. 

[Upon receipt of this letter I immediately wrote Dr. Hudson that 
I would be very glad to have a full statement of his reasons for his 
conclusions as given in the above letter. In a few days the telegraph 
acquainted the world with the doctor's death. I. K. F.] 

From Louis T. More, Professor of Physics, University 
of Cincinnati 

I think "fraud is always a possible explanation of such incidents, 
but as I know nothing of the people whom this incident involves, I 
can express no opinion on this question. 

The mathematical probabilities of such a coincidence occurring 
to any one are exceedingly unlikely; but it must be remembered 
that the mathematical law of probabiUty deals only with the future 
and not with something that has occiirred. For example: let a 
million different numbers be in a bag, then the probability of drawing 
a specified number is only one in a million; but the specified number 
may come out first equally as well as at any other time. So in this 
case the probability that such an occurrence would happen to the 
owner of the "Widow's Mite" is exceedingly small; but after it has 
happened, the mathematical laws have nothing more to do with it, 
and would at least only say what chance it has of occurring again. 

As a physicist I would say that the dynamical laws of physics 
seem to me neither to support or controvert the existence of meta- 
physical forces and energy (such as suggestion, thought transference, 
etc.). The difficulty of explaining the incident by the existence of 
subconscious faculties is that the whole of the incident does not 
seem to have been ever in the mind of any individual, and as the 
subconscious memory must have been supplemented by the secret 
influence of other minds which are also acting subconsciously, making 
the chain a weak one. 

I have never had an experience which induces me to believe in 
spirit communication. 



FROM CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY 509 

From Frederick Slate, Professor of Physics, Univer- 
sity of California 

My judgment on the data as presented would be of little value 
because of the uncertainty whether the data are exhaustive — granting 
fully that they are genuine so far as they go. No reader of "plot 
stories" (detective tales, etc.) can be unaware that a really simple 
clue when once furnished, may disentangle an apparently inexplicable 
tangle. So here it may be true that some essential element has been 
overlooked which would clear up the whole situation, and this possi- 
bility (mind I go no further than possibility) makes any judgment 
or opinion or testimony on the part of one like myself to whom certain 
limited evidence is reported (without chance of further exhaustive 
investigation) inconclusive and nearly valueless. 

This is the position which my daily contact with interpretation 
of elusive phenomena incline me to take. In critical cases one does 
not assert any one conclusion until he has tested it in comparison 
with others, on new combinations, and, if possible, in some crucial 
way. This presentation is marked by a desire for fairness and is 
striking; and, as you say, one noticeable element in such cases is the 
apparently trivial character of the subject matter. Undoubtedly — 
perhaps unfairly — this circumstance prejudices judgment as to their 
importance and connection with deep problems. They are estimated 
I suppose, more as psychological puzzles. 

From Arthur L. Foley, Professor of Physics, Indiana 
University 
I simply do not know what to believe. I reject explanation sug- 
gested in questions 2 and 3, and think the solution is in i or 4. Between 
I and 4 I am inclined to believe in fraud in some form or another, 
perhaps indirect and even unsuspected by the medium and her rela- 
tives. 

Coincidence is out of the question. I know of no subconscious 
faculties. As to spirit communication will say perhaps possible, but 
I can scarcely believe probable. 

From A. Riehl, Professor of Philosophy, Halle, 
Germany 
As to the hypothesis of spirit communication: I know nothing 
about spirits, and know only One Spirit. 

From , Professor of Psychology, 

University 

In my judgment fraud is not a probable explanation, and if the 
facts are correctly and fully stated, I would not regard coincidence 
as a solution within the range of probabilities. 

On the basis of our knowledge of hypnotic conditions, subcon- 
scious states, and their detection by certain individuals, many but 



5IO FROM OHIO UNIVERSITY 

not all of the facts mentioned can be accounted for. Further inves- 
tigation would probably enable us to account for the totality of 
facts o-n the same or similar grounds. I would not regard the hypoth- 
esis of spirit communication as a possible solution. 

(It is understood that my name is not to be used in connection 
with anything you may publish. 

From Benj. F. Thomas, Professor of Physics, Ohio 
State University 

As to the fraud hypothesis, I would say yes, most decidedly. The 
statement that "the communications are believed to be by direct 
or independent speech and by raps, with lights occasionally appearing 
on the curtains ' ' determines my answer. I firmly believe that matter 
can be moved, stirfaces illuminated and sounds produced, solely by 
material agencies. To deny this is to deny the law of the conservation 
of energy in the physical universe. 

Your statements concerning the family and circumstances make 
it difficult to assign a motive or to locate a responsible agency; but 
the use of the moss-covered devices of the darkened room, knockings, 
lights, etc., etc., are to my mind, conclusive that human agency iS 
at work with intent to deceive. 

From George Rebec, Professor ,of Philosophy, Univer- 
sity of Michigan 

I am not ready to make the charge of fraud, though it seems to 
me there are several points at which fraud could have entered into the 
case. Coincidence is not within the range of probabilities. The 
hypothesis of stibconscious faculties is nearer a rational explanation 
than anything else, to my mind. Last of all solutions to be turned 
to is the theory of spirit communication. 

From Sydney H. Mallone, Holywood, Belfast, Ireland 

The facts being as stated in the narrative, I think the hypothesis 
of fraud is absolutely excluded. A good deal depends upon what 
is meant by coincidence. Given one line of events leading up to a 
certain result, "A," and another line of events (supposed to be inde- 
pendent of the former) leading up to another result, "B," let "A" 
and "B" "fit" as regards time and other circiunstances. To say 
that their fitting is coincidence may mean that there is simply no 
connection between "A" and "B," and none between the line of 
events which separately led up to them. Or it may mean that there 
is no connection between the two lines such as to lead to "A" and 
" B " " fitting" each other as they do. This may be so, but mathemati- 
cally I believe it would be extremely improbable. In any case, it is 
no solution, but the mere assertion of a negative which can not be 
proved and can only be held as a matter of feeling. 



FROM TOKYO UNIVERSITY 511 

There is no reasonable theory of the existence of subconscious 
faculties at the present time. But the work of The Society for Psychical 
Research leaves sorae doubt in my mind that the solution will ulti- 
mately be found in this direction. 

I can not think that the hypothesis of spirit commiuiication has 
any standing whatever in logic or in fact. None in logic, for it con- 
travenes every condition of a reasonable hypothesis, and none in 
fact for the facts which (I admit) seem at first suggestive, crumble 
away on analysis. It resembles the hypothesis of the earth being 
the motionless center of the planetary system. 

I will value any further information that may be obtained con- 
cerning this affair. 

From D. W. Hering, Professor of Physics, New York 
University 

I regard fraud on the part of some one as a probable explanation. 
Spirit commiinication is not a possible solution without the assump- 
tion (purely gratuitous) that spirits have greater power than living 
beings. 

From M. Anesaki, Professor of the Japanese Language, 
Literature and History, College of Literature, 
Imperial University of Tokyo. 

I regard fraud qtiite impossible as an explanation. Coincidence 
is not impossible, but I can not think it at all probable in this case. 

Point III. 3 B of your paper excludes the possibility of the exist- 
ence of subconscious faculties as the explanation. 

It seems to me that the only possible explanation of the facts is 
the hypothesis of spirit communication. My conception of a spirit 
may differ a little from many others, but I find it not necessary to 
state it here in full. The existence of spirit forces, not necessarily 
of spirit individuals, will be enough for the explanation. 

From John Trowbridge, Professor of Physics, Harvard 
University 

I regard fraud as the probable explanation. I have known of so 
many cases of carefully arranged plans to get men of position and 
of means under the dominion of medituns that I am suspicious of 
even apparently honest Spiritualists. There is a "hall-mark" about 
convocations of Spiritualists and mediums. Generally there is the 
loss of a child (often in my experience called Mamie) ; there are, too, 
uneducated people of the middle class who have not been trained 
in scientific observation and in weighing evidence. It seems prob- 
able that some one has communicated facts forgotten by you to the 
so-called medium. 

A lucky guess might account for the choice or description of the 
right one of the two kinds of mites. 



512 FROM MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY 

I know of no facts — incontrovertible — which can be brought 
forward to-day to prove that so-called subconscious faculties can 
put one mind in communication with another. So-called subcon- 
sciousness exhibits merely a deranged working of the individual 
mind. 

I have too great respect for Mr. Beecher to suppose that he is 
occupied in another world with trivial matters. I have never heard 
of a communication from one who has passed on which was of import- 
ance or indicated the character of the man or woman whom the 
medium professes to introduce again to this world, and I am forced 
to believe that Spiritualism is dangerous. "This way madness 
lies." 

W. B. PiLLSBURY, Professor of Pscyhology, University 
of Michigan 

I should think conscious fraud on the part of any of the partici- 
pants a very unlikely hypothesis. 

Coincidence is always possible. What the probabilities are would 
be impossible to say on the basis of known data. The chances 
against the first story being true are great, in spite of the rather vague 
description of the coin, of the place of concealment, etc., and the 
fact that it was only a friend of Mr. Beecher, not Mr. Beecher him- 
self, who had owned it. The choice of the correct coin was only an 
eqvial chance, and could very well be chanced. 

I do not regard the existence of subconscious faculties as a reason- 
able theory of explanation. If any one present had ever known 
that the coin had not been returned, the fact might have been recorded 
as a detached memory and a vague statement made to take on the 
given meaning. But the transfer of the statement to another with- 
out words would be hard to tmderstand. 

I am not a believer in spirit communication. The only evidence 
for it is of a negative nature, and even if all explanation fails, it is 
as well to say "I don't know," as that "spirits did it." There is no 
direct evidence for the existence of spirits in commTm.ication with 
mortals, and while there are many things we cannot explain, it seems 
to me safer to assume that the unusual is to be explained by a 
new law of physics and of mind than by the supernatural agencies. 

From Edward L. Nichols, Professor of Physics, Cornell 
University 
Permit me to suggest that it is not improbable that Professor 
West kept in mind the fact that he had lent to you so valuable a coin 
instead of forgetting it. Also, that upon the appearance of the illus- 
tration he may have noticed with some surprise the use of the wrong 
coin in the Dictionary. He may have mentioned the fact to one or 
more persons that the illustration was from a coin in his collection 
and it was not the one intended to be tised and mav have added that 



FROM PROF. JOHN DANIEL 513 

the coin had not been returned yet, and he thought Hkely that it 
was locked up in a safe. This latter remark would very naturally 
be made in case the suggestion were made to him that it was worth 
while to look the matter up. This bit of straight information having 
come to the ears either at first hand or by repetition of the medium, 
the rest is quite in accordance with the usual procedure in such 
cases. The chief stock in trade of the medium consists in such bits 
of unusual information concerning matters not generally known 
which are stored up and used when the occasion arises. The manner 
of presentation bears all the professional earmarks; especially the 
concealment of the source of information and the introduction of some 
well-known personage of the past, such as Mr. Beecher. Given the 
possibility of acquiring the necessary information in some such 
natural and every-day manner, it seems to me unnecessary to consider 
either of the other explanations suggested in your letter even in the 
face of the apparent honesty of the parties and the lack of obvious 
motive. 

From John Daniel, Professor of Physics, Vanderbilt 
University 
This case is prepared with such thoroughness and care and with 
such evident honesty and seriousness that I take it as nothing short 
of my duty to reply. I hesitate, and certainly very much dislike, 
to give fraud bluntly as an explanation. Possibly characters who 
go off into this sort of thing sometimes develop a sort of frenzy akin 
to insanity, and are not altogether responsible. A few general con- 
siderations have settled me into an attitude of incredulity toward 
supernatural pretences. Some of these I briefly state: (i) The 
people who practice them are as a class weaklings without good 
balance of mind and character; (2) The so-called communications 
are, for the most part, trivial, if not utter nonsense. I am tuiable 
to bring myself to think that our Heavenly Father would use such 
characters for this extreme privilege, to the exclusion of the truly 
devout and the truly great — intellectually. I am also tmable to 
think that genuine revelations would be trivial; (3) Anything is 
mysterious until it is understood and everything is clear and simple 
when it is understood. I have spent many pleasant and profitable 
hours before such master tricksters as Hermann, Kellar, etc. They 
are honest men who are very skilful and have good tricks. A few 
of their tricks are simplicity itself to me because I know how to do 
them ; but they are as ' ' wonderful ' ' to my friends who do not under- 
stand them as any in the list. These prestidigitators can do dozens 
of tricks that are as "wonderftd" to me as anything possible. They 
are simply incomprehensible, and yet Hermann says they are as 
simple as the others. So I conclude that when anything is myster- 
ious to us it is because we do not know all the simple facts necessary 
to make it clear. 



514 FROM WILLIAM T. STEAD 

I say "no" as to coincidence, "yes" as to fraud. I am not 
familiar with any subconscious faculties or phenomena growing out of 
these faculties. I do not think that spirit commixaication is a possi- 
ble solution. I think "the great gulf fixed" has not been passed. 

From William T. Stead, Editor, "Review of Reviews," 
London, England 

I am very thankful to have received this account of the "Widow's 
Mite" incident. I heartily wish that every one who has had a similar 
experience would take the trouble of putting the facts upon record, 
and submitting them to the judgment of those who are interested 
in such matters. 

I think fraud is absolutely precluded; and, in my judgment, 
coincidence is also excluded. 

The subconscious faculties are there. What they are, what 
powers they possess, no one can accurately define; but they can only 
explain all the facts by supposing that the subconscious faculties are 
capable of receiving or acquiring knowledge from sources unknown 
to our physical consciousness to such an extent as to make each of 
us potentially omniscient. We may be, but the hypothesis makes 
a much greater demand upon my capacity for belief than that of 
spirit return. In my judgment, spirit communication is the only 
obvious solution and it is the only possible solution. 

From Arthur Allin, Professor of Psychology and Peda- 
gogy, University of Colorado 

There is such a thing as imconscious, or rather unintentional, 
deception, as may be instanced in the argument put forward that 
Christ may have been mistaken in His own claims. There is such 
a thing as ventriloquism which may have been practised in this case 
You yourself may have been deceived, imagining this and that. 
The dark room, etc., are utterly suspiciotis. You may have spoken 
about this coin matter yourself and have forgotten about it. 

Coincidence is also within the range of probabilities. You may 
have made remarks which were interpreted thus and so, remarks 
which you had forgotten having made. The medium of those inter- 
ested with her may have read in the Standard Dictionary about the 
coin or have heard some remarks about it, forgotten by the speakers, 
and inference may have been drawn about the safe, etc. Much, 
however, is explicable, I think, by persons reading back into their 
past experiences thoughts and actions which did not belong there. 

All "subconscious faculties" are explicable as physiological func- 
tions unaccompanied by consciousness. Many sensations and per- 
ceptions are not apperceived at the time, but later. (See Loeb, 
"Comparative Psychology," and "Physiology of the Brain," and all 
the literature on instinct and habit and congenital variations giving 



FROM HARVARD UNIVERSITY 515 

rise to unconscious or involuntary adaptations.) The law of par- 
simony forbids multiplication of unnecessary entities and hypotheses. 
Spirit communication in the present state of psychology is becom- 
ing useless and mischievous. While no one can say there is no such 
communication, scientific facts are showing that the facts are quite 
explicable on known scientific grounds. 

From Edwin B. Holt, Instructor in Psychology, Har- 
vard University 

Your account of the "Widow's Mite" has entertained me immeas- 
tirably. I think it capitally done, and the questions for expert opinion 
really incomparable. In any case, the Dictionary of the Funk & 
Wagnalls Company should not suffer from being so directly involved 
in notoriety. 

[Instructor Holt is more ingenious than generous. Yet, does it 
really occur to him or anybody else that any publisher would expect 
to make friends for his dictionary by advertising that it contained a 
conspicuous error? — I. K. F.l 

From A. Meinong, Professor of Philosophy, University 
of Gratz 

As we are often confronted with insoluble questions in regard to 
the causation of an event, even if we are well acquainted with the 
particulars, without connecting that event therefore, with supernat- 
ural agencies, so I do not see why I should look upon the case you 
mention as anything else but a further proof of the narrow confines 
of otar knowledge. On account of these narrow confines the physical 
as well as psychical world may very well have aspects which so far 
have not yet been scientifically investigated. It is also possible that 
the so-called "occultism" may have something to do with such facts, 
powers which exist even tho they are not yet explained. In an iso- 
lated case it will always be more scientifically correct to refer the 
obscurities of this case to our lack of knowledge of certain natural 
processes rather than to any supernatural agency. How the spiritu- 
alistic circle in this case obtained its information relating to the coin, 
I, of course, cannot offer any suggestions. But it is much more 
probable that such information was obtained in a natural, tho hidden, 
way, than in a supernatural way, contradicting all scientific as well 
as non-scientific experience. 

The report is an extremely interesting account of the mislaid 
coin. I thank you for the opportunity of reading it. 

From Alfred H. Lloyd, Professor of Philosophy, Uni- 
versity of Michigan 

I must confess myself hopelessly skeptical about all such revela- 
tions. Nothing will convince me of spiritualistic communications 
until the messages become more significant in themselves. The 



5i6 FROM FRENCH UNIVERSITY 

trivial character of what we hear in the stories condemns the evidence 
so often attributed to them. 

From Edward Colsonet, Professor of Philosophy, 
University of Besan^on, France 

I do not believe in spirit communication; nor does coincidence, 
in my mind, explain these facts. 

The facts in this "Widow's Mite' ' incident seem to me to be explica- 
ble by the suggestion of ideas which are unconscious or subconscious, 
and which provoke the natural consequence of the emotions, the 
sensations and the acts with which they were at some other time 
associated. 

If fraud has a certain part in the statement of the facts proved, 
this fraud may itself be the result of a condition of mind brought 
about by suggestion or autosuggestion. 

From MiNOT J. Savage, D. D., New York 
I assume the accuracy of your account. This does not mean that 
I trust your veracity. All your friends do that. It rather means 
that I assume that you both saw and reported correctly. 

Let me then deal with your points in their numerical order. 

1. The theory of fraud seems to me most unlikely. If a knowl- 
edge of the facts had been obtained for the purpose of making a 
sensation, I see no reason why other facts — such as names, etc. — 
might not have been obtained. Then, as publicity of the name of 
the psychic and the financial motive are both ruled out, no adequate 
motive for fraud appears, even had it been possible. And, as you 
state the case, it does not seem possible. 

2. The theory of coincidence does not seem worth considering. 
Coincidence may be a strong horse ; but I do not believe he can carry 
the load which so many oflf-hand explainers would put upon him. 

3- As to the "subliminal" theory, I have expressed my general 
conclusion in my book, "Can Telepathy Explain?" It is proverbi- 
ally difficult to prove a negative. If any one chooses to suppose that 
the psychic (without knowing it) is able to get into communication 
with any and all other minds, however widely separated in either 
time or space and (without their knowing it) select and report all 
sorts of facts, why one can only wonder at the credulity involved, 
and be surprised to see to what suppositions people will sometimes 
resort in the effort to escape a conclusion they do not happen to like. 
A supposition like this is hardly entitled to be called a "theory" — 
for a scientific theory must be constructed out of facts. And it does 
not seem to me that there are nearly enough facts in this direction 
to help support such a so-called theory. 

Telepathy is admitted to be true by all competent investigators. 
Btit, so far as our knowledge goes, telepathy has some limits. And 
then, on the telepathic theory, you ought to have been able to get 



FROM WELSH UNIVERSITY 517 

certain facts which you knew, were strongly thinking of, and very 
anxious to obtain. 

4. The one explanation left is the spiritistic. 

Believing as I do, that such a thing as a communication from the 
spirit world is possible, what are the difficulties in the way of accept- 
ing it in this case? In the light of the statement you have made, 
they are chiefly of a negative kind. Why was this particular thing 
said, and not something else? Why was not more said? Why did 
not somebody else speak? Why this? Why that? 

Questions of this kind imply that we have a right to establish 
conditions; — that we know what the difficulties of communication 
are, on both sides (and we do not) ; — that we are to decide what shall 
be said, and how; — and many more things beside. 

Now, it seems to me that the "scientific method" demands not 
that we impose conditions on nature or reject facts unless they are 
of the kind we expect or like, but that we observe and record the facts, 
whatever they are, and then try to find out what they mean. 

Some of the most wonderful discoveries of the world have had 
their origin in unexpected and apparently trivial occurrences. On 
any theory, except that of fraud, the facts you relate are more wonder- 
ful than the steam-engine or wireless telegraphy. And if they should 
prove to be indications of a hitherto unknown continent floating on 
a mystic and vmsailed sea, why should we disregard them because 
they are not something different from what they are? If there is a 
possible great new truth whose half-uttered, fragmentary whispers 
only as yet we can hear, let us at least listen until the whispers sink 
to silence or swell into some clear revelation. 

In a universe of which we know so little assumption is out of 
place, and an attitude of reverent humility (however careful and 
critical it may be) is the only reasonable one. 

From J. Brough, Professor of Logic and Philosophy, 
University of Wales 

The occttrrences here described are not, in my opinion, of interest 
to science except as problems and exercises for students of science. 
Some mystifications which I have myself accomplished have been 
dependent on out-of-the-way facts of science which are passed over 
by most professors and students; but if any eccentric professor had 
been present who had accidentally noticed and remembered these 
facts, I should have been found out; and the facts themselves, if 
they were considered of interest, would be investigated quite apart 
from "strange occurrences." 

I think "fraud" is too hard a word, and not correct as a descrip- 
tion of the ' ' strange occurrences ' ' of the kind described in this narra- 
tive. Such occurrences are usually colored by a little "mystifica- 
tion." These "strange occurrences" are determined in occasion, 



5i8 FROM COLORADO UNIVERSITY 

character, and limitation by coincidences. The special coincidences 
that determine this case might be more or less cleared up by a person 
of the "private detective" sort who was educated up to them, and 
had done some mystifications himself. A detective, however, who 
does not know the difference between mystification and fraud would 
be of no use. 

In my judgment, spirit communication is not a "possible solu- 
tion." Subconscious facilities are a fact, not a theory, but there are 
no theories of their nature reliable enough to be used for explaining 
fully these "strange occurrences." They explain a certain residuum 
left over by other explanations. 

From William Duane, Professor of Physics, Colorado 
State University 

I would regard fraud as a probable explanation, altho, perhaps, 
fraud is too severe; and would say "no" as to coincidence. 

The theory of subconscious faculties could be made to fit the facts. 
I would be willing to accept such a theory if it were based on thousands 
of well-authenticated facts, examined under experimental conditions, 
not otherwise. 

All I can say about spirit communication as a possible solution 
is that anything almost is possible. 

From Rev. C. H. Parkhurst, D. D., New York 

I do not think that fraud is a probable explanation ; and I answer : 
decidedly, no, as to the hypothesis of coincidence. 

I know so little as to what subconsciousness is capable of, that I 
should be afraid to conjecture what it is not capable of. 

As to spirit communication being a possible solution, my answer 
is: "possible," yes. 



II 

SIR WILLIAM CROOKES' PROVISIONAL EX- 
PLANATION OF TELEPATHY— HAR- 
MONY WITH NATURAL LAW. 

Mr. Crookes, when elected President of the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science, said in his remarkable address that 
all of the phenomena of the universe are presumably continuous 
waves and vibrations we trace in everything, and we have good evi- 
dence that they extend from one vibration to two thousand trillions 
per second, thus varying in their frequency and also in their velocity. 



CROOKES' EXPLANATION 519 

"As a starting-point," he said, " I will take a pendulum beating 
seconds in air. If I keep on doubling I get a series of steps as follows : 

starting Point Vibrations />er Stcond 

Step I , . , 2 

" 2 4 

" 3 8 

4 16 

" S 32 

" 6 64 

" 7 128 



256 

S12 

1024 

32768, 

1,048576! 



■Sound 



„ '^S 33,554432 L Electrical Rays 

30 1073,741824 ' 

" 35 34359,738368j 

* 40 1,099511,627776 (. Unknown 

" 45 35,184372,088832 1 ^ntnown 

" 50 1125,899906,842624 j- Lj^j,\ j- Rays 

" 55 36028,707018,963968! 

*' 56 72057,594037,927936 I u„tno™.n 

' S7 144115,188075,855872 f^"''"°'^" 

' 58 288220,376151,711744] 

" 59 376440,752303,423488] 

" 60 1,15288,1504606,846976 J- Roentgen or X-Rays (?) 

" 61 2,305763,009213,6939523 

;; f 4,611526,018427,387904 i Radium Rays (?) 

63 9.223052,036854,775808 j 3 \ ' 

"It will be seen by the above that at the fifth step from unity, at 
32 vibrations per second, we reach the region where atmospheric 
vibration reveals itself to us as sound. At 32,768 per second, to the 
average human ear the region of sound ends, but certain more highly 
endowed animals probably hear sounds too acute for our organs, 
that is, sounds which vibrate at a higher rate." 

After the 32nd step, vibrations increase rapidly, giving us electric 
waves, light waves at an unthinkable number of vibrations per 
second, until we reach the x-ray and finally to us the radium-ray. 
The rays of radium are the results of quintillions of vibrations per 
second, and are so subtile that they pass through all soUds. 

It may be that the x-waves and the radium-waves are only at 
the threshold of the wonders of the tuiseen universe. May it not be 
that thought waves, waves by which spirits communicate, be con- 
tinuous with the waves that begin with sound, and light, and radium, 
and that the spirit body, which like Christ's resurrected body passed 
through solid matter, be but continuous vrith the physical bodies 
which we have in this world, raised to an indescribable number of 
vibrations? If communications of spirits are through vibrations in 
ether or in some still more subtile substance, we should have in this 
a possible explanation of telepathy. 

Professor Crookes continues : 

"It seems to me that in these rays we may have a possible mode of 
transmitting intelligence, which with a few reasonable postulates, may 
supply a key to much that is obscure in physical research. Let it be 



520 A PERSONAL TEST 

assumed that these rays, or rays even of higher frequency, can pass 
into the brain and act on some nervous center there. Let it be con- 
ceived that the brain contains a center which uses these rays as the 
vocal cords use sound vibrations (both being imder the command of 
intelligence), and sends them out, with the velocity of light, to impinge 
on the receiving ganglion of another brain. In this way some, at least, 
of the phenomena of telepathy, and the transmission of intelligence 
from one sensitive to another through long distances, seem to come 
into the domain of law, and can be grasped. A sensitive may be one 
who possesses the telepathic transmitting or receiving ganglion in an 
advanced state of development, or who, by constant practice, is 
rendered more sensitive to these high-frequency waves. Experience 
seems to show that the receiving and the transmitting ganglions are 
not equally developed; one may be active, while the other, like the 
pineal eye in man, may be only vestigal. By such a hypothesis no 
physical laws are violated, neither is it necessary to invoke what is 
commonly called the supernatural. 

"Is it inconceivable that intense thought concentrated towards a 
sensitive with whom the thinker is in close sympathy may induce a 
telepathic chain of brain waves, along which the message of thought 
can go straight to its goal without loss of energy due to distance? 
And is it also inconceivable that our mtmdane ideas of space and 
distance may be superceded in these subtile regions of tmsubstantial 
thought where "near" and "far" may lose their usual meaning? 



Ill 



HOW TO PERSONALLY TEST SPIRITUALISM. 

Advice by Rev. William Stainton Moses, M.A. (Oxon.), one of the founders of The 
Society for Psychical Research, and, for many yea.rs,editor oi Lig/ti^ London, England. 

"If you wish to see whether Spiritualism is really only jugglery 
and imposture, try it by personal experiment. 

"If you can get an introduction to some experienced Spiritualist, 
on whose good faith you can rely, ask him for advice; and, if he is 
holding private circles, seek permission to attend one to see how to 
conduct seances, and what to expect. 

"There is, however, difficulty in obtaining access to private circles, 
and, in any case, you must rely chiefly on experiences in your own 
family circle, or among^'your own friends, all strangers being excluded. 
The bulk of Spiritualists have gained conviction thus, 

"Form a circle of from four to eight persons, half, or at least two, 
of negative, passive temperament, and preferably of the female sex, 
the rest of a more positive type. 



"PATIENCE IS ESSENTIAL" 521 

"Sit, positive and negative alternately, secure against disturbance, 
in subdued light, and in comfortable and unconstrained positions, 
round an tmcovered table of convenient size. Place the palms of the 
hands fiat upon its upper stu-face. The hands of each sitter need not 
touch those of his neighbor, though the practice is frequently adopted. 

"Do not concentrate attention too fixedly on the expected mani- 
festations. Engage in cheerful but not frivolous conversation. 
Avoid dispute or argument. Scepticism has no deterrent effect, but 
a bitter spirit of opposition in a person of determined will may totally 
stop or decidedly impede manifestations. If conversation flags, 
music is a great help, if it be agreeable to all, and not of a kind to 
irritate the sensitive ear. Patience is essential, and it may be neces- 
sary to meet ten or twelve times, at short intervals, before anything 
occurs. If after such a trial you still fail, form a fresh circle. Guess 
at the reason of your failure, eliminate the inharmonious elements, 
and introduce others. An hour should be the limit of an unsuccessful 
seance. 

"The first indications of success usually are a cold breeze passing 
over the hands, with involuntary twitchings of the hands and arms of 
some of the sitters, and a sensation of throbbing in the table. These 
indications, at first so slight as to cause doubt as to their reality, will 
usualy develop with more or less rapidity. 

"If the table moves, let your pressure be so gentle on its surface 
that you are sure you are not aiding its motions. After some time 
you will probably find that the movement will continue if your hands 
are held over, but not in contact with, it. Do not, however, try this 
until the movement is assured, and be in no hvirry to get messages. 

"When you think that the time has come, let some one take 
command of the circle and act as spokesman. Explain to the imseen 
Intelligence that an agreed code of signals is desirable, and ask that 
a tilt may be given as the alphabet is slowly repeated at the several 
letters which form the word that the Intelligence wishes to spell. It 
is convenient to use a single tilt for No, three for Yes, and two to 
express doubt or tmcertainty. 

"When a satisfactory communication has been established, ask 
if you are rightly placed, and if not, what order you should take. 
After this, ask who the Intelligence purports to be, which of the com- 
pany is the meditmi, and such relevant questions. If confusion 
occurs, ascribe it to the difficulty that exists in directing the move- 
ments at first with exactitude. ' Patience will remedy this, if there 
be a real desire on the part of the Intelligence to speak with you. If 
you only satisfy yourself at first that it is possible to speak with an 
Intelligence separate from that of any person present, you will have 
gained much. 

"The signals may take the form of raps. If so, use the same code 
. of signals, and ask as the raps become clear that they may be made 



522 TEST BY REASON 

on the table, or in a port of the room where they are demonstrably 
not produced by any natural means, but avoid any vexatious impo- 
sition of restrictions on free communication. Let the Intelligence 
use its own means; if the attempt to communicate deserves your 
attention, it probably has something to say to you, and will resent 
being hampered by useless interference. It rests greatly with the 
sitters to make the manifestations elevating or frivolous and even 
tricky. 

"Shotild an attempt be made to entrance the medium, or to 
manifest by any violent methods, or by means of form manifestations, 
ask that the attempt may be deferred till you can secure the presence 
of some experienced Spiritualist. If this request is not heeded 
discontinue the sitting. The process of developing a trance-medivun 
is one that might disconcert an inexperienced inquirer. Increase 
light will check noisy manifesations. 

" Lastly. Try the results you get by the light of Reason. Main- 
tain a level head and a clear judgment. Do not believe everything you 
are told, for though the great unseen world contains many a wise and 
discerning spirit, it also has in it the accumulation of htmaan foUy, 
vanity, and error; and this lies nearer to the surface than that which 
is wise and good. Distrust the free use of great names. Never for a 
moment abandon the use of your reason. Do not enter into a very 
solemn investigation in a spirit of idle cttriosity or frivolity. Cultivate 
a reverent desire for what is ptu-e, good and true. You will be repaid 
if you gain only a well-grounded conviction that there is a life after 
death, for which a pure and good life before death is the best and 
wisest preparation." 



IV 

AN ACCOUNT OF EUSAPIA PALLADINO'S 
AMERICAN SEANCES* 

By HEREWARD CARRINGTON 

The recent investigation of the mediumship of Eusapia Palladino 
has lent to her case a peculiar interest for all Americans, and it is no 
longer possible to ignore it. This is, indeed, the first case of medium- 
ship that has ever attracted such wide notoriety in this country, — ■ 
in the solution of which so many men of science have interested them- 
selves. The reason for this is doubtless due in part to the fact that 
the newspapers gave such wide publicity to her case on her arrival; 
and partly because she came to this country with twenty years of 
investigation and modified indorsement behind her, from eminent 
men of science in various parts of Europe. Never before has a medium 
been investigated by so many scientific men: Morselli, professor of 
nervous diseases in the University of Genoa- Lombroso, the eminent 
anthropologist and criminologist, of Turin; Sir Oliver Lodge, the 
noted English physicist; M. and Mme. Curie, the discoverers of 
radium; Prof. d'Arsonval, the French physicist; Prof. Charles Richet, 
professor of physiology of the College de France; Dr. Ochorowicz, of 
Warsaw; — these and many other men of science had investigated her 
case, and one and all had stated their belief that, in spite of Eusapia's 
trickery, in spite of the fact that she would resort to fraud whenever 
the opportunity was given to her to do so; nevertheless, if the case 
were studied long enough and carefully enough, genuine phenomena 
would be obtained. Nearly every group of experimenters who have 
investigated Eusapia's mediumship have discovered a certain amount 
of fraud; yet the percentage of this fraud has not in the past been 
considered great; and it was only during the later American stances, 
when the medium apparently lost her power, that much fraud was 
discovered. Prior to this, group after group of skeptical investigators 
had investigated her; but each in turn had returned convinced. 

In view of this fact, then, it is all the more striking that the results 
of the American investigation — at least in public knowledge and 
estimation — should be so at variance with all that has preceded it. 
Has Eusapia Palladino simply been found out — her tricks discovered 
by a group of men more acute and more alert to the tricks of the 
medium than former groups? Or has this negative conclusion — so 

* Written for this edition.— I. K. F. 



524 EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 

at variance with that of the European investigators — been arrived at 
somewhat too hurriedly, and after too superficial a view of the case ? 
That is the question to be settled, and the one I propose to discuss 
as briefly as possible in the pages that follow. 

Eusapia Palladino is an illiterate woman, able neither to read nor 
write, born of humble parents in Southern Italy. It is said that her 
mother died in giving her birth, and that her father was shortly after 
assassinated by brigands. Married twice, both husbands have taken 
her maiden name. Early in childhood, she discovered her remarkable 
powers by accident, and for years refused to exercise them, thinking 
them "of the devil." In the later '8o's she fell under the notice of 
Professor Chiaia, of Naples, who observed a number of phenomena 
in her presence. He became "converted," and on August 9, 1888, 
published an "open letter" to Professor Lombroso, in which he drew 
the latter's attention to these facts, and called upon him to investigate 
them. For more than two years, however, Lombroso refused to do 
so, thinking that the phenomena were due to fraud, and that an 
investigation of such "marvels" savored of superstition. Later, 
however, he in turn became convinced; and, after hundreds of sittings, 
stretching over many years, he became finally converted, through her, 
not only of the reality of the facts, but of the truth of spiritism. In 
a long talk I had with Professor Lombroso, a year before he died, he 
told me in detail of the remarkable evidence which had sufiSced to 
bring him to this belief. 

Lombroso's conversion had a considerable effect upon the scientific 
men all over Europe; and in 1892 a commission met in Milan composed 
of Professors Schiaparelli, Gerosa, Ermacora, Aksakof, Charles du Prel, 
Charles Richet, and Buffern. The result of the series of seventeen 
seances was to convince all concerned that genuine physical phenomena 
of a remarkable character had been observed, and they so stated in 
their report. 

Following this, a long series of important experiments was held in 
different centers, by different men : In Naples and St. Petersburg, in 1 893 ; 
in Rome, in 1893 and 1894, under the direction of M. de Siemiradski, 
Correspondent of the Institute; in 1893-94, at Warsaw, at the house 
of Professor Ochorowicz; in 1894, at Carqueiranne, at the house of 
Professor Richet, and on the ile Roubaud, under the direction of 
Professor Richet, Sir Oliver Lodge, Mr. P. W. H. Myers, and Dr. 
Ochorowicz; in 1895, at Naples, under Dr. Paolo Visani-Scozzi, 
specialist of nervous diseases, at Florence; and at Cambridge, at the 
house of Mr. F. W. H. Myers — these sittings being shared by Professor 
and Mrs. Sidgwick, Miss Alice Johnson, Dr. Richard Hodgson and 
others; in 1895, at I'Agnelas, at the house of Colonel de Rochas; in 
1896, at Tremezzo, at Auteuil, and at Choisy- Yvrac ; in 1897, in 
Naples, Rome, Paris, Montfort, and Bordeaux; in 1901-2, at the 
Minerva Club at Geneva; in 1905 at Rome and at Paris, under Flam- 
marion; in 1906-07, in Genoa, — attended by Morselli and others; 



EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 525 

at Turin, in 1907, under the direction of Lombroso; and again, the 
same year, under the direction of Professors Poa, Herlitzka, and 
Aggazzotti — assistants of Professor Mosso; as well as four winters in 
Paris, in 1905, '06, '07, and '08 — under the direction of the Psycho- 
logical Institute. These experiments were all conducted by scientific 
men, — in addition to which innumerable seances were held by more 
or less private investigators, — the reports of which have never been 
published. I have summarized the whole of this historic evidence 
in my book, "Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena," — to which I 
would refer the reader for further details of this early period of her 
mediumship. 

In November, 1908, the English Society for Psychical Research 
asked the Hon. Everard Feilding, Mr. W. W. Baggally,* and myself to 
go to Naples, and hold a series of sittings on their behalf. Prior 
to this, I had never seen this medium, and, while I was somewhat 
impressed by the weight of the cumulative testimony in her favor, 
still, I could not believe that the facts were genuine until I had seen 
them for myself! This was natural enough, perhaps, and was par- 
ticularly so in my own case, because of the fact that, in ten years' 
constant investigation of mediums and their claims, I had never seen 
a single physical phenomenon which I considered genuine — all had 
been fraudulent, without a single exception. I had, moreover, pub- 
lished a book, "The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism," in which 
I had exposed very many mediumistic tricks, and made for myself 
not a few enemies among spiritualists. Thus, I was none too ready 
to be convinced, and certainly not especially apt to be taken in by 
the clumsy tricks of the average professional medium. 

It was with alacrity, therefore, that I accepted the invitation of 
the English S. P. R., and went to Naples to see this strange woman. 
In our room at the hotel, in company with my two colleagues, I there 
saw ten seances, — the efEect of which was to convince me that genuine 
phenomena of a remarkable character had been witnessed by us — 
this conviction being shared equally by Messrs Feilding and Baggally. 
(The results of these sittings I summarized in popular form in Mc- 
Clure's Magazine, for October, 1909; and will be found described in 
full in the Proceedings of the S. P. R., Part 59.) 

Our object, at these sittings, was to provide a continuous record 
of all that transpired, in the form of a stenographic account — not only 
of the phenomena, but of the position of each of the medium's feet 
and hands throughout the seance. Thus, it is possible to re-read the 
accounts of these s6ances, and ascertain, with approximate accuracy, 
the whereabouts of the medium's body and of all her members, during 

* Both Messrs. Feilding and Baggally were severely skeptical investigators, neither 
of whom had ever seen, prior to .their sittings with Eusapia, any physical phenomena 
which they considered genuine. Like myself, they had always encountered fraud, in 
professional mediums, before our sittings with Eusapia in Naples — which convinced us 
all equally. None of |us were — nor are we yet— spiritualists, in the common accepta- 
tion of the term. H. C. 



526 EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 

the production of any particular phenomenon. The records of these 
stances show this. 

A typical seance with this medium would be about as follows: 
Having arrived at the stance-room, Palladino is searched by several 
ladies present, who disrobe her completely in another room. Then, 
she takes her place at a table, which is placed in front of her, and 
about a foot in front of the cabinet curtains behind her. The con- 
trollers (holders), to right and left, assume control of the medium's 
hands and feet; and the seance begins. In the brightest light, table 
levitations take place; these being followed by raps and scratches 
upon the table-top. Then the curtains of the cabinet blow out toward 
her, as though propelled by a strong breeze from within the cabinet. 
At this stage of the seance, the light is lowered, and more striking 
manifestations follow. The small table in the cabinet is moved about ; 
the musical instruments placed upon it are played upon, and then 
lifted out by invisible hands onto the stance table. Finally, touches 
and grasps by visible hands are experienced by the sitters seated nearest 
the cabinet. Lights may appear, or more startling manifestations 
ensue. The above is, however, a description of the general run of a 
seance obtained through Eusapia's mediumship. 

The question is always asked: If the phenomena are genuine, 
why should it be necessary to insist on darkness; and why must you 
always have a cabinet? Such "suspicious" circumstances certainly 
point to fraud. As these are two questions which are invariably asked, 
it may be necessary to stop and answer them here, before we proceed 
further with an account of the facts. 

In the first place, then, Eusapia says they are necessary because 
she thinks they are; she herself believes it, and for that reason insists 
upon it. Certainly darkness, if complete, facilitates fraud; but the 
darkness at Eusapia's seances is never complete; and it is generally 
light enough to see the medium with more or less distinctness, and 
during the early part of each s6ance it is quite as light as any well- 
shaded drawing-room. But there is a certain amount of reason in 
the theory that darkness is essential for the production of these 
phenomena. We all know that it js one of the prime requisites in 
photography; here it is recognized, and no one thinks of saying that 
it is "suspicious" to grant such conditions for the accomplishment 
of the required task. And, similarly, it may be light disintegrates or 
in some way interferes with the subtle physical forces which are 
(apparently) liberated , and which produce the phenomena seen at her 
seances. Whether such phenomena are real is beside the question, 
at present; I am only contending that the presence of darkness does 
not, of itself, prove them to be suspicious, or necessarily fraudulent. 

Very much the same may be said in reply to the objection urged 
against the use of a cabinet. If Eusapia sat inside the cabinet — as 
most fraudulent materializing mediums do — and figures issued forth, 
one at a time — the medium meanwhile remaining invisible within it — • 



EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 527 

then I should say, "yes, the cabinet is certainly a just cause for 
suspicion." But when, on the other hand, the medium seats herself 
outside the cabinet, as Eusapia does, — and manifestations take place 
behind her, inside it, — while her hands and feet are held outside it — 
then I do not think that a cabinet is necessarily a suspicious con- 
trivance. (The cabinet may be erected anywhere, in a comer of a 
room, an old cupboard, anything of about the right dimensions will 
answer the purpose.) 

Still the question might be raised, why employ a cabinet at all? 
Why not do away with it altogether? To this I can only reply that 
the medium insists that it is necessary, in order to concentrate and 
hold the "force" — just as a storage battery might be charged with 
electricity for later use. The analogy is in many ways close. Eusapia 
says that the "force" generated during the sitting is stored in this 
space; and she illustrated it by the following analogy. Taking 
a piece of paper, she said to us: "If you wish to convey your breath 
across an open space, you do not hold the paper so (holding it flat), 
but so (rolling it into a tube). Similarly, the cabinet is needed to 
store and concentrate my 'fluid' (force)." 

Again, I am not urging that this interpretation of the facts be 
accepted, or that it is necessarily the true one. I am only contending 
that the presence of a cabinet, under the conditions prevailing, is not 
necessarily a suspicious factor; but is one of those conditions de- 
manded by the medium which we have to accept and make the best 
of. It is hardly necessary to say that the cabinet may be strictly 
examined both before and after the s6ance, and at times during its 
progress, when the phenomena are actually in progress. (See later 
in this article for evidence of this.) 

And now a few words are necessary in explanation of my reasons 
for bringing Eusapia Palladino to this country. The reasons were 
simply these. Having been convinced by our own series of sittings in 
Naples that genuine phenomena occurred, and that this was a case 
calling at least for further investigation, I felt that it would be a great 
pity if Eusapia died without having been investigated by any men of 
science in America, after she had been studied for so many years by 
men of eminence in Italy, France, and England. I felt that it would 
be a lasting regret and reproach if this occurred; and I finally succeeded 
in interesting a small group of men and women here, who, among 
them, subscribed the necessary funds to cover Eusapia's expenses 
for a short series of sittings, her passage to and from America, and 
additional expenses. My object was siraply to have her case in- 
vestigated as thoroughly as possible, while in this country; and the 
facts either proved or disproved. It made no difference to me what- 
soever whether the verdict was for or against her; and, in spite of the 
fact that I had previously published my book about her, and publicly 
stated my belief in her powers, I was willing to retract all that I had 
said, and to admit myself in error, if only her phenomena could be 



528 EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 

explained away, and shown to be due to simple trickery. That is 
still my attitude; and beyond a scientific interest in the case, I have no 
special plea, no "ax to grind," no desire to see the case settled one 
way more than another. True, I felt complete confidence i® Eusapia's 
ability and powers, and felt that the more closely she was investigated, 
the more surely would her phenomena be proved. I still hold to this 
view, and believe implicitly that further investigation, both here and 
in Europe, will tend to vindicate her, and show that the so-called 
"investigation" conducted by scientists here was not only abortive 
and unsatisfactory, but more or less superficial and contrary to the 
observed facts. Of this, however, more later. 

Let us turn to the seances that were held during Eusapia Palladino's 
visit here, and see to what extent they justify the negative conclusion 
that was reached in this country. Extracts from the contemporary 
shorthand notes will be of value in this connection, and I have freely 
availed myself of these. First of all, hov/ever, I must give a rapid 
summary of the most important happenings during her visit hecre; 
preceded by a short account of a seance, as it appears to an onlooke-r. 
Those interested in the details of the case had best consult the pub- 
lished works dealing with this question, and particularly "Eusapia 
Palladino and her Phenomena." 

As briefly as possible, then, a description of a typical seance with 
Eusapia Palladino would be about as follows: After being searched, 
the medium takes her place at the table. Her right hand, knee, 
and foot are controlled by the sitter to her right; her left hand, knee, 
and foot by the sitter to her left. She is generally controlled or held 
in the following manner : The sitters on either side of her place their 
feet upon those of the medium; or she places her feet upon theirs. 
Her knees are pressed together by the knees of the sitters to the right 
and left. In this position, the lower limbs of the medium are appar- 
ently under complete supervision, and it would be impossible for her 
to remove her feet without the fact being noticed. In the same way, 
both her hands are held by the sitters to right and left, or held by 
those of the medium. It seems a simple process, simply enough per- 
formed. To all appearances, nothing could be fairer; nothing could 
be more stupid than to allow the medium to remove one of her hands 
or one of her feet without the sitter on that side being aware of the 
fact. 

Remarkable as it may appear, however, this is not the case; and 
the medium has been known to release one of her hands or one of 
her feet repeatedly, and with the free member produce spurious 
phenomena. Her method of doing so is as follows: The two hands 
(or feet), which are controlled, are brought together gradually, until 
they are nearly touching. Then, by an adroit substitution, one hand 
or foot is removed, and the remaining hand so arranged that it gives 
the impression that both hands are being held. It is difficult to ex- 
plain this on paper — far more difficult to explain why the substitution 



EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 529 

may not be noticed, and why the sitters are still under the impression 
that both hands or feet are being held. If, however, the reader will 
refer to pp. 186-95 ^^ '^^J "Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism," he 
will see how these various methods of holding can be evaded, and 
how Eusapia sometimes tricks her sitters and produces fraudulent 
phenomena with the free hand or foot, as she has several times been 
caught doing here in America. 

It must not be thought that the sitters who attend these seances 
are ignorant of these methods of trickery. On the contrary, every 
group of scientific men that has ever experimented with Eusapia 
loiows very well that she will defraud them, if the chance be given 
her to do so; and twenty years ago, these precise forms of trickery 
were described by the French and Italian scientists, — the same tricks 
which have lately been rediscovered with such pomp and ceremony 
by her American investigators! Her tricks are old and well known. 
No new form of trickery was discovered during her American \asit; 
only the old tricks rediscovered. From the accounts at the time, 
one would gain the impression that a complete system of trickery, 
hitherto unknown, had been unearthed; whereas, as a matter of fact, 
the American investigators had only discovered for themselves what 
the European men had known all the time! R will be seen, then, 
that the tremendous publicity given to these "exposures" was not 
warranted; nor did they give to the public a fair idea of what had 
really been discovered, or what had been found at these sittings. 

"But," it may be objected, "if Eusapia constantly resorts to 
trickery in this way, hov/ can we be sure that any genuine phenomena 
are obtained ? Is it not far more probable that she is always tricking 
— only her tricks remain at times undetected?" That is apparently 
the rational attitude to take; and the one which, at first sight, is the 
only com.nion-sense one to assume. Nevertheless, it is incorrect; 
Eusapia can produce genuine phenomena; she also tricks! Those 
who deny this have not seen both. Every group of scientific men, 
in turn, — in spite of the fact that trickery has been detected, — has 
declared that, if only experiments were conducted carefully enough 
and long enough, phenomena would be obtained which no form of 
trickery could explain; and the longer they experimented, the more 
certain they became of this fact. In view of this painstaking in- 
vestigation, then, and of their deliberate conviction, should not one's 
judgment be held in suspense until the facts are known in full, — and 
until it be seen whether or not the "explanations" offered suffice to 
explain what occurred at these American stances — to say nothing of 
those held for twenty years in Europe before her arrival here? 

In order to convey to the reader a fair idea of the inadequacy of 
many of the explanations offered, iet us take a single instance — table 
levitation. The explanation put forward, and accepted as the true 
one by the vast bulk of the American people, is that contained in the 
Jastrow-Miller exposure, and is as follows: During the tiltings and 
34 



530 EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA ' 

oscillations of the table, Eusapia manages to release one of her feet; 
then, inserting the toe of this foot under the table-leg nearest to her 
(and by pressing down upon the surface of the table with her hands) , 
she is enabled to lift the table several inches off the floor. This is the 
"explanation" usually accepted as the true one. 

Now let us consider the following facts: (i) During the course 
of the seances, complete levitations have repeatedly been obtained 
when both the medium's hands were held away from or clear of the 
table. Now, it may be ascertained by any one that it is impossible to 
lift a table completely oflE the floor by means of the feet and knees 
alone. The utmost that can be done is to tilt the table away from one 
■ — provided the hands do not rest on the top. These levitations, 
therefore, — and there were many of them — can not be explained in 
the manner postulated. (2) Table levitations have repeatedly been 
obtained when both legs of the table nearest the medium were inserted 
in wooden tubes, which effectually preveni^ed the medium from 
reaching the table legs with her feet. (See my article in October, 
1909, McClure's Magazine; and my ''Eusapia Palladino and her 
Phenomena," pp. (f6, etc.) (3) The nature of some of the levitations 
quite negatived the«idea that they could have been done in the manner 
suggested. . Thus, if they were produced by the toes of her feet, it 
would be possible only to produce levitations of six or eight inches, 
or at most a foot, high. Now, some of our levitations were more than 
two feet high, and the medium had to stand in order to keep her fingers 
on the table-top. In this condition she walked seven or eight feet across 
the s/ance-room, before the table fell with a bang to the floor. In such 
a case, the explanation proposed completely fails. (4) Levitations 
have repeatedly been obtained when both the medium's feet were 
held beneath the table, by some one kneeling beneath it — as they were 
during the first seance by the reporter from the New York Herald. 
We see, therefore, that the proposed explanation is completely in- 
sufficient to cover the more striking facts, and we must believe one 
of two things: Either the American investigators did not see any of 
these more striking manifestations— in which case they should have 
waited, before publishing their verdict, and studied her further, as did 
the European investigators; or they did — in which case they must 
explain in detail how a medium can produce levitations of a table by 
means of her feet, when these feet are held beneath the table, or when 
the table-legs are inserted into protective wooden cones; or when 
the table is lifted to a height of two feet or more from the floor, and 
every one can see her walking about and not touching it. The absurd- 
ity of the proposed explanation should be very apparent — and is so 
to any one who has seen the more striking and convincing of her 
phenomena. 

I have dwelt thus at length upon the table-levitations and the 
proposed "explanations" of them for two reasons. In the first place, 
we see that the proposed explanations do not, in reality, explain the 



EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 531 

facts; and in the second place, we see that the verdict arrived at by 
the American investigators was superficial and based upon an inade- 
quate knowledge of the phenomena. This verdict, it seems to me, 
applies to the whole of the investigation, and is not limited to the 
table-levitations alone. 

Let me now give a brief sketch of some of the more interesting and 
impressive j)henomena that occurred during Eusapia's visit here, — 
at some of the good seances. I shall first of all describe a few of the 
manifestations in outline, and then give detailed descriptions of them 
■ — drawing, for that purpose, upon the stenographic records of the 
seances in question. 

In addition to the table levitations, which we have just discussed, 
• — and a few examples of which will be given presently, — there are 
other phenomena that take place a,t eveiy one of Eusapia's seances, 
which deserve special mention. Of these, the "curtain phenomena," 
or the blowing out of the cabinet curtains as though impelled by a 
strong breeze from within the cabinet; and the breeze from a scar over 
Eusapia's left temple — the famous cold breeze of which so much has 
been heard, — are the most common. This breeze frora Eusapia's 
forehead was noticed, in all, five or six times, and I have learned one 
rather interesting thing in this connection. It is is this: After a 
good seance this breeze is strong, and after a poor seance it is alto- 
gether lacking — or so feeble that it can hardly be detected. On three 
occasions, Eusapia gave a sort of "after-sitting " to three or four of us 
who had remained (after the other sitters had departed) , and the most 
startling phenomena I have ever seen occurred at these informal 
seances. A strong breeze was always found to issue from E. P.'s scar, 
after these sittings, — though none had been noticed after the regular 
or formal seances given earlier the same evening! 

Apropos of this breeze, it may be said that the supposed "explana- 
tions" of it are as absurd and as unsatisfactory as are the explanations 
of the table levitation. Professor Miinsterberg, e.g., in his article in 
the Metropolitan Magazine, stated that it was produced by an 
apparatus concealed under Eusapia's clothing, and consisted of an 
elaborate system of metal tubes, rubber bags, etc., concealed beneath 
her dress. Messrs. Jastrow, Miller, Kellogg, Davis, etc., — who 
also have supposedly "exposed" this manifestation, — assert, on the 
contrary, that she has nothing of the kind, but that she merely pro- 
duces this breeze by blowing with her mouth, and diverting the air- 
current upward by puckering the lips in a certain direction ! Professor 
Miinsterberg's explanation is of course insulting to the intelligence of 
those eminent men of science who have investigated her case for 
years in Europe, and who have repeatedly witnessed this breeze after 
a most careful search of the medium. On the other hand, th3 later 
explanation completely fails when we take into consideration the 
following facts: That this breeze has been obtained when Eusapia's 
mouth and nose have been covered with the hands of the investigators; 



^1,0 EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 

and it has been felt when the medium, at our request, exhaled as 
forcibly as possible during the occurrence of this breeze. It did not 
increase or decrease during this process, but continued in a perfectly- 
even stream, — without check, hindrance, or augmentation. The 
in conclusiveness of the supposed ' ' explanation ' ' is thus made manifest 
— this characteristic extending also, it seems to me, to the other 
theories which have been offered of Eusapia's phenomena during her 
visit here. 

Of transportations of objects without apparent cause, we have 
had many examples, and under excellent conditions. The small 
table from the cabinet has repeatedly been placed on the seance table, 
when both Eusapia's feet were well controlled; and, in several in- 
stances, when her feet have been tied with rope to the feet of her 
controllers, or to the rungs of her chair. On one occasion, the small 
table was slowly lifted out of the cabinet, beyond and round the 
left-hand curtain, in a light sufficiently good to see that the medium 
was not touching it. The table rose to a height of nearly four feet 
from the floor, rapped five times against the wooden partition, — 
forming the wall on that side of the room, — turned upside down, and 
fell to the floor. It was between three and four feet from Eusapia at 
the time and, as I have said, it was light enough to see that nothing 
was touching it. While this was in progress, both her hands were 
separately accounted for, and I was holding both her feet under the 
table in my hands. 

At nearly every one of our seances, we have had one or more of 
the musical instruments played upon. The music-box has been played 
upon for several seconds together — the handle being turned twelve 
or fourteen times, to judge by the sound. Ample time was afforded 
the controllers to ascertain that they were holding separate hands. 
The tambourine has been played upon for almost a minute — it being 
seen to play over the medium's head, then beyond the left-hand 
curtain, again over theraedium's head, over the head of the left-hand 
controller, again over the medium's head, again beyond the left curtain, 
and finally it was thrown to the floor of the cabinet. The small bell has 
repeatedly been rung for several seconds together — a hand being seen 
ringing it. 

One of the most remarkable manifestations, however, was the 
playing of the mandolin, on at least two occasions. The instrument 
sounded in the cabinet first of all, — distinct twangings of the strings 
being heard, in response to pickings of Eusapia's fingers on the hand 
of one of her controllers. The mandolin then floated out of the 
cabinet, onto the stance table, where, in full view of all, nothing touching 
it, it continued to play for nearly a minute — first one string and then 
another being played upon. Eusapia was at the time in deep trance, 
and was found to be cataleptic a few moments later. Ker hands 
were gripping the hands of her controllers so tightly that each finger 
had to be opened in turn — by the aid of passes and suggestion. 



EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA S33 

At the second stance an incident occurred which can not be ex- 
plained by any normal means — even granting, for the sake of argument, 
that Eusapia had succeeded in releasing one hand; and as such in- 
cidents are rather rare, it should be recorded. One of the sitters was 
standing behind the right-hand controller, and about five feet from 
Eusapia. The medium seemed to be well controlled. Suddenly, 
immediately in front of this sitter, about on a level with his eyes, 
appeared in space the small flageolet which had been placed on the 
table in the cabinet. No one saw how it got into its present position, 
but there it was suspended in space, about five feet from Eusapia, 
and certainly too far for her to have reached with her right hand, — 
even had it been free, and had she been standing up. As a matter of 
fact, however, her hand was not free, and every one could see her 
seated in her usual place at the table. Here, then, we have an example 
of a phenomenon that could not have been produced by the medium's 
hand (even supposing it to be free), because the flageolet was seen 
to be far beyond her reach. It remained in this attitude long enough 
for Mr. B. to reach out his hand and take the flageolet — after his 
attention had been drawn to it. Certainly it remained suspended in 
space for several seconds, without visible means of support. 

The hands and faces seen during our stances here were of the 
same general character as those seen at Naples. Some would appear 
to be fleecy, gaseous, evanescent; some, on the contrary, would seem 
to be perfectly solid and human, and, were it not for the fact that 
Eusapia's hands were held securely, and frequently seen lying upon 
the table at the time, one would swear that they were her own hands 
and arms performing the touchings. As it was, she appeared to 
develop a "third arm," which issued from her shoulder, and seemed 
to recede into it. There were one or two rather remarkable demonstra^ 
tions of this. As before, touchings were frequently experienced when 
nothing could be seen touching the sitter. On such occasions there 
was a clearly lighted space between Eusapia and the sitter who 
received the touches. On the other hand, Eusapia's "materialized" 
hands frequently remained visible for several seconds together, and 
in one case a hand rested on the right controller's back while she 
counted eleven. 

On two or three occasions, faces were seen by some of the sitters 
(I personally never saw one), and at another time an entire form was 
seen standing behind the right controller. On this occasion, the con- 
troller on the right had received a touch on the shoulder, and, looking 
round, saw a distinct form standing behind him. As he looked, the 
form slowly disintegrated and vanished — disappearing like a wisp of 
smoke into the cabinet. This process of "dematerialization" took 
several seconds. 

We have secured at least one print of "spirit fingers" in clay, 
placed in the cabinet. It must be acknowledged that the conditions 
pertaining to this experiment were not evidentially perfect- It would 



534 EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 

be hard to say why not, as the controllers seemed satisfied throughout 
that they had constant control of the medium's hands. Nevertheless, 
the impression did not induce in me a feeling of complete confidence. 
At the same time, it must be acknowledged that we found it im- 
possible, when experimenting after the seance, to imitate the marks 
we found in the clay. For, whereas the "spirit fingers" were smooth, 
any impression made by our own fingers was rough — the fingers 
pulling away some of the clay. The texture of the touch, so to say, 
was different. 

We also obtained an imprint on a photographic plate, which had 
been wrapped in several thicknesses of black paper, and placed in the 
cabinet. It will be remembered that Professor Lombroso gave an 
example of this in his book, "After Death — What?" p. 84 (Fig. 35). 
The phenomenon is of such rare occurrence that this new confirmation 
of the fact can not fail to be of interest. The plate was provided by 
Dr. Frederick T. Simpson, of Hartford, Conn., who placed it in the 
cabinet. It was brought to New York wrapped, and taken out of 
Dr. Simpson's bag just before the stance. When developed, the 
impression of three fingers was found on the plate. There is no normal 
explanation of this fact, as every precaution was taken. The photo- 
grapher who wrapped the plate took an impression of his own fingers, 
and they "were about three times the size of those on the plate. What- 
ever their interpretation, they can not be explained by normal means. 

Readers of our Naples report will remember that, on one occasion, 
the rope fastening Eusapia's left leg was untied. Mr. Feilding's 
amusing comments on this incident will also be remembered. In one 
of our stances a white hand appeared, and untied both Eusapia's 
hands and one of her feet. (They had all been fastened with rope.) 
First of all, the left wrist was untied. Eusapia said that "it was not 
her fault," and asked to be tied up again. This was done, even more 
securely than before. A white hand then appeared and untied the 
knots on both Eusapia's wrists and her left ankle, coiled up the rope, 
and threw it at one of the spectators ! The whole operation took more 
than a minute, — during which time, it need hardly be said, the con- 
trollers had ample time to verify their control, in response to my urgent 
and repeated entreaties for them to do so ! The controllers on this 
occasion were well-known business men, — extremely skeptical in the 
ordinary walks of life. They had to admit, however, that there was 
no doubt as to the reality of this phenomenon. 

Intelligent action has been shown on numerous occasions. Once 
a gentleman seated to the left of Eusapia had his cigar case extracted 
from his pocket, placed on the table in full view of all of us, opened, 
a cigar extracted, and placed between his teeth. It was light enough 
at the time to see that no one was touching the case, which was lying 
on the table. 

Such, in brief outline, is an account of some of the more interesting 
phenomena that took place at Eusapia's stances in America. There 



EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA S35 

were many others — too numerous to mention — which withstand all 
attempts at destructive criticism just as effectually. For instance, on 
several occasions, the small table in the cabinet continued to move 
about by itself, when one of the sitters was right in the cabinet, 
alongside it; and could see plainly that nothing was touching the 
table, which continued to move about under his very eyes. Often, 
sitters to the right and left of the medium have been touched when 
there was a clearly lighted space between the medium and the sitter 
— a space which her arm would have had to traverse were she herself 
producing the touchings ; but which every one could see was occupied 
by nothing visible or tangible. A better illustration of some of these 
incidents is, perhaps, afforded by a stenographic account of the 
sitting in question. A few extracts may be of interest. 

The following is an excerpt from a sitting held February 7, 1910. 
which was attended only by a small group of sitters who had previously 
obtained sittings. The right controller was a well-kngwn lawyer; on 
the medium's left sat a retired business man, who had attended several 
sittings before; was thoroughly conversant with the general run of 
the phenomena; but a remarkably cool-headed man throughout all 
investigations of this character. The following series of incidents, 
among others, then occurred : 

Complete levitation of the table in an absolutely horizontal position 
and lasting about twenty-five seconds. The left and right controllers 
both had their hands across E.'s knees. 

Mr. F. is touched twice on the arm. He says: "I am holding 
her left hand in her lap and her foot rests on min£." E.'s right hand 
is visible on the table. 

The right-hand curtain blows right out, so that the interior of the 
cabinet can be seen. Mr. F. is touched again on the arm. The light 
is good, the medium and all the sitters can be seen perfectly. Mr. F. 
is touched on the shoulder. None of the other sitters can see anything 
touching him. There is a clear, light space between him and the 
medium or the curtain. 

A white object is seen over Mr. F.'s head. It touches him on the 
head. He is touched on the shoulder. Mr. E. is touched at the same 
time on the shoulder. 

Mr. F. says : ' ' My right arm was smoothed down from the shoulder 
to the elbow by a hand." 

A black object is seen to come out of the cabinet. 

The music-box plays. A hand comes from the curtain holding the 
music-box; it throws it onto the table. Raps are heard in the cabinet. 

The tambourine is heard to sound in the cabinet. The controllers 
say that they are controlling E. perfectly. 

The mandolin comes out of the cabinet to the right about on a level 
with E.'s face and two or three feet from her. It is held by a white 
hand, and is being played by an invisible hand. The light is very 



S36 EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 

good and the mandolin and the hand holding it can be seen plainly by 
all the sitters. The mandolin goes back into the cabinet and comes 
out again immediately, higher up, near the top of the curtain. The 
hand is still holding the mandolin. E. stands and stretches out 
toward the mandolin, moving exactly as though she were holding it 
and waving it in the air; her right hand, however, is seen lying on the 
table on Mr. E.'s. The mandolin is deposited on the table. It has 
thus been playing all the time, although nothing can be seen touching 
the strings. E.'s left hand was held under the curtain. The con- 
trollers raise E.'s hands and see that they are holding both. The 
control is perfect. 

Complete levitation for twenty-five seconds. The table is raised 
two feet. Mr. E. and Mr. F. are touched at the same time. Mr. E. 
is touched on the knee. Control is perfect. 

The tambourine appears on the left side of the left-hand curtain. 
It is held outside the curtain by a hand. It is more than three feet 
from E. It is held by an arm stretched out from the inside of the 
cabinet. It then disappears and appears again about a foot over E.'s 
head. This is done in a very leisurely way — the tambourine being 
shaken, as if to attract the attention of the sitters toward it. It re- 
mains visible and waving above E.'s head for fully twenty seconds when 
the arm stretches ovit over the table (above E.'s head), and drops the 
tambourine with scarcely any sound on tlie table. 

Mr. E. is seized roughly by the shoy.lder. E. is kicking her foot 
back and forth on the floof . Everybody can hea.r her feet tapping on 
the floor. Mr. E. is violently pulled cm the ann. Mr. F. is touched 
at the same time on the elbow. E. 's right hand is visible, her left hand 
is held under the curtain. A hand is seen at the right side, near the 
curtain. E.'sright hand is visible. The right-hand curtain blows out. 

E. says that she is becoming unconscious and suggests that they 
tie her hands and feet. Mr. C. gets a rope, but the sitters do not care 
to tie E., so this is not done. 

Mr. E. is pulled roughly. His chair is shaken and finally pulled 
out from beneath him, upsetting him to the floor. 

Light No. 5 is lighted, and a shade is pulled up on one of the 
windows, letting a good light into the room from the street. 

Noises are heard in the cabinet, as if the table were moving. 

The instruments are thrown off the small table in the cabinet. 
Three loud knocks are heard in the cabinet. The control is perfect. 

The right controller says: "The control is good." The left con- 
troller says: "There is no question of the control on my side." 

Mr. E. is touched. Mr. E. feels a hand on the top of his head. 
Nothing can be seen touching him. 

E. leans on the right controller. The table in the cabinet moves. 
At each movement of the table, E. stretches out her right leg. A 
white hand appears over E.'s head for an instant, reappearing three 
times, and each time is instantly withdrawn. E.'s face appears 



EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 537 

luminous in the darkness, although this may be the effect of the light 
from the window. 

Mr. F. says: "I am touched three times on the left elbow." Mr. 
C. tells him: "The curtain is blowing out and touching you." 

Mr. E. is touched on the face. There is a clear, light space between 
him and the curtain, and nothing can be seen touching him. Mr. F. 
is touched continually. One of the sitters saw a white object come 
out of the cabinet and touch Mr. E. 

The small table has now reached the outer 'edge of the cabinet on 
the right, and it falls over with the top out ol the cabinet, as if pushed 
over from behind. The curtain has slipped toward the center, so that 
it is not there to obstruct the movements of the table. Three raps are 
heard on Mr. E.'s chair. 

The table rises with a quick, easy motion — -the top being pushed 
up and the table raised in an upright position two feet above the floor. 
It is then brought over and laid on the seance table. As it is laid on 
the seance table, a hand is seen to be holding it by the legs. 

Mr. E. leans forward to look at the hand and accidentally touches it 
with his face. The hand feels warm and moist — like a human hand. 
The table is lifted up and slid over Mr. E.'s back as he remains in a 
stooping position, and falls to the floor without much noise at a dis- 
tance of four or five feet from the table. 

Mr. F. and Mr. E. are both touched at the same time. 

Mr. C, standing behind Mr. E., is touched twice. He is too far 
away for E. to touch him. The controllers say that they are positive 
that they are controlling E. perfectly. 

Mr. C. is touched again. Mr. F. is touched. Mrs. H., second from 
the medium on the right, is touched. Three raps are heard on the 
table. 

E. recedes at times into the cabinet, — the curtain being blown over 
her face. 

A third arm is seen to come from E.'s shoulder on the right, while 
her right hand is lying on the table visible and touching Mr. E.'s. 

The tambourine, lying on the center of the table, beats a rhythm 
on the table, banging up and down loudly. E. is rapping with her 
foot on the floor. The tambourine keeps this up for about a minute. 

A long arm pushes the curtain out on the right side, shaking it 
about. The effect of this is exactly as if E. stretched out her right 
aiTci and did it herself. Mr. E. says, however, that her hand never 
left his, and in fact her hand can be seen resting on his on the table. 
This is repeated three times. 

The curtains blow out violently. 

Mr. E. holds up the hand that he is controlling. A few moments 
later he says: "I have lost her hand."' Nothing happens at this 
time and he immediately regains possession of the hand. 

Raps are heard in the cabinet. 

Mrs. H. is again touched. Mr. E. is touched- 



538 EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 

Mr. F. and Mr. E. are touched at the same tune. 

The red electric light, which had been turned off, is turned on by 
itself. The control is changed — Mr. F. giving his place to Miss A. 
Eusapia rests; she stands up for a moment. 

The toy piano at the left side of the cabinet moves slightly on the 
floor. A white hand comes over E.'s head. 

Complete levitation of the table about two feet; the table goes 
down almost to the floor and is then raised up again. It remains off 
the floor for twenty-five seconds. 

The table raps several times with one leg. A white hand is seen 
near E. 

The table beats a rhythm. The left controller is pulled. The cur- 
tain blows out. 

The flageolet, which was lying on the table, is taken off, and touches 
the left controller on the neck. The flageolet is then stretched out and 
Dr. H. takes it. 

E.'s right hand is visible, and her left hand is held under the curtain. 
Mr. E. holds up the hand which he is controlling, and in this way Miss 
A. finds that she is controlling E.'s other hand, and not the same one. 
The hand which she is controlling is under the curtain. Mr. F. holds 
the flageolet near the curtain, and it is taken away from him. It is 
then waved about in the air. . . . 

A white hand is seen to sweep up from E-'s side in a semicircle and 
remain visible over her head for a few seconds. It then disappears. 

The controllers on both sides are touched. 

Mr. F. : "The hand with which I am controlling E.'s hand is pulled 
about on the table." 

The small table is placed back in the cabinet and is thrown out 
again immediately. 

Dr. C, standing near the curtain on the left, is touched. His face 
is touched. The left controller is touched also. The control is good. 

Dr. C. says that something is holding him near the curtains. 

There is nothing visible touching him. 

The left and right controllers are touched, pinched, and pulled 
continuously. . . . 

E. is leaning toward the right. 

Noise of the table moving in the cabinet. Left controller says: 
"I am touched on the waist." 

E. moves her hand back and forth over the table and the small 
table in the cabinet moves. 

The small table makes a great deal of noise in the cabinet, as if it 
were being banged about. E. says: "I will smash it." 

E. says: "I have no more strength." She asks all the sitters to 
stand up, away from the table, with hands joined. This is done, and 
the table moves away from the cabinet. 

Complete levitation of the table about two feet. E. is more than 
a foot from the table and is not touching it in any w^y. The table 



EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 539 

moves to the right and tips. E. sits down and the table is taken away 
from her. The seance ends. 

Such is a typical good seance with Eusapia Palladino. It will be 
seen from the record that many of the manifestations are of such a 
nature that they can not be explained by the simple methods of trickery 
proposed; it would be a physical, no less than a moral, impossibility 
for her to have done them. But if the phenomena are genuine, — 
even granting them to be such, — the objection at once occurs to the 
mind: How silly, how childish all these manifestations are! The 
idea of grown-up men of affairs sitting for hours together, and having 
their ribs poked and tickled, either by the medium, or by some equally 
mischievous intelligence — that seems, at first sight, so preposterous 
that one finds difficulty in considering the facts seriously. Yet there 
is another way of looking at these manifestations — a very different 
way. If these phenomena represent, not the clumsy tricks of a pro- 
fessional medium, but the operation of some new force (to put it at its 
lowest estimate), then these manifestations assume a new and a 
most important significance. It will be remembered that both lay- 
men and scientists jeered at Galvani; and called him the "frog's 
dancing-master"; "yet," as he pathetically said, "I know that I have 
discovered one of the greatest secrets of nature." So here. If a 
single manifestation produced in the presence of Eusapia Palladino be 
proved genuine; if a single levitation, a single rap, if only a thimble 
be moved an eighth of an inch by some force unknown to and un- 
recognized by science, then (in my estimation) her whole trip to this 
country has been more than justified; and the phenomena witnessed at 
her stances, — if genuine, — are of tremendous scientific importance, — 
no matter how senseless and apparently unintelligent they may be. 
If such be the case, the slightest manifestation, the movement of an 
object without contact; the transportation of an object from the 
cabinet; even the inane pokings and touchings, assume new interest 
and importance, and warrant the most painstaking inquiry from the 
best minds which the times can afford. 

And thus we see that we have a legitimate, scientific problem before 
us. It is of no use to say: "Of what value are such phenomena, even 
if true ? Of what practical use and utility are they ? ' ' Such questions 
must not enter into a scientific problem, which attempts, only, to 
answer the question : Are such facts true ? Cui Bono ? must not enter 
into a scientific problem. As Mr. Andrew Lang remarked, in replying 
to critics of this character: "What is the use of argon? Why are 
cockroaches permitted f " 

In estimating the evidence in the Palladino case, we are met with 
almost insuperable difficulties, at the very start. In the first place, 
here is a medium who has repeatedly been caught in fraud; and the 
natural tendency of the average healthy-minded man is to doubt the 
reality of any facts produced through the instrumentality of a medium 



540 EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 

who has once been caught in trickery. This is a most natural attitude 
to assume; and I have full sympathy with it, because it was once my 
own. Nevertheless, as I am now fully persuaded that genuine phe- 
nomena /tawg been obtained through this medium in spite of her fraud, — 
it may be the part of wisdom to stop, just here, and consider this 
fundamental question a little more in detail before passing on to the 
next problem presented. 

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Eusapia really 
possesses genuine supernormal powers, which she can exercise on 
occasion. Her ability to exercise these powers depends upon a 
variety of circumstances — her bodily health; her state of mind; the 
mental attitude of the sitters; the degree of confidence the medium 
places in her sitters; upon a certain "vital capacity" of the medium to 
produce phenomena that evening, etc. If all these conditions are fa- 
vorable, a splendid seance is the result; manifestations begin at once, 
and, no matter how well the medium is controlled, the phenomena 
proceed without let or hindrance in the brightest light. If one or 
two of these factors be lacking, then only a mediocre seance is seen; 
while, if the majority of them are not present, a very poor seance is the 
result, and, phenomena failing to appear, Eusapia endeavors to stimu- 
late their production by insisting upon more darkness, and finally by 
resorting to trickery. I have invariably found this to be the case, — 
the point being well illustrated by our eighth and ninth stances at 
Naples. At our eighth, we asked Eusapia if we might tie her hands 
and feet to ours with rope, and she refused with much heat and dignity. 
In spite of the fact that her feet and hands were thus free, however, 
a comparatively poor seance resulted. Phenomena were slow in ma- 
king their appearance, and when they did, they were not very striking. 
At the ninth seance, on the other hand, the medium permitted us to 
tie her without a word, and even suggested that we should do so her- 
self. Yet the manifestations began at once, in good light, and went 
on uninterruptedly, in spite of all our efforts to prevent them! My 
interpretation of these facts is that, at the former seance, Eusapia felt 
that the "power" was weak, and had beforehand determined to resort 
to trickery in an attempt to supplement it in the production of phe- 
nomena. Hence, she did not wish to be tied. But at the ninth seance, 
she felt that the "power" would accomplish all that was wanted, by 
itself, and hence made no objections when we proposed tying her. Yet 
if we had tied her at the eighth seance and not at the ninth, it is 
certain that the critic would believe that the poor seance was due to 
the securer fastenings, and the better seance to the lack of them; but, 
as we have seen, precisely the reverse of this was the case, and the 
second seance was far better than the first ! 

I have dwelt thus at length upon this side of the question because 
it is such an important one in the eyes of the public. To them, it 
seems incredible that any medium who can produce genuine phenom- 
ena should resort to fraud. But it is a fact, nevertheless. I have seen 



EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 541 

both fraudulent and genuine seances, and I know. The two resemble 
each other, it is true, but the fraudulent seance is a very weak imita- 
tion of the other. In the first place, the light is always much lower; 
and, in the genuine sittings, it is often light enough to see that the 
medium is not touching or near the object moved. I should, perhaps, 
insist upon this point. Personally, I do not base my belief upon any 
phenomena which might possibly have been produced by fraud; only 
upon those which could not possibly have been produced in this man- 
ner. And these consist chiefly in those manifestations which take 
place in light good enough to see that the medium is not producing 
the manifestations herself; not upon those which take place in dark- 
ness or semidarkness, — and which depended, for their verification, 
upon the sense of touch alone. 

Eusapia tricks chiefly because of her vanity. Rather than acknowl- 
edge that she can not produce phenomena on any particular occasion, 
she will resort to any subterfuge. Yet, in spite of her trickery, she can 
also produce genuine phenomena; and every group of investigators 
that has worked over her case, and studied her long enough and care- 
fully enough, has come to the same conclusion. Her American in- 
vestigators are the only ones who have jumped to the conclusion that 
all her phenomena are fraudulent, on the strength of two or three poor 
seances which they attended. The difference in their method of attack- 
ing the problem may be seen from the following fact alone : In Paris, 
at the Psychological Institute, the investigators spent four whole 
winters on her case before publishing any report at all, or saying 
one word in public about her phenomena. In America, her inves- 
tigators attended one or two, or at most three sittings, and promptly 
declared the whole to be fraud, on the strength of this superficial 
examination! The difference in method should be too apparent to 
need comment. 

Such an investigation, such a method, might perhaps have been 
justified, were it not for the fact that Eusapia Palladino came to this 
country with twenty years of scientific investigation behind her. If 
she had been an entirely new medium, about whom nothing was known; 
then such a method would have been far more justifiable. But in- 
asmuch as this was not the case; seeing that many men of scientific 
repute in Europe, — who had studied her case carefully for years, — 
had publicly stated their belief in her powers; seeing that they had 
done so in spite of her trickery, which was well known to them also, 
and against which they warned all investigators; does it not appear 
irrational and superficial to pronounce the case fraudulent from start 
to finish on so brief an examination? Is the presumption not, rather, 
that the American investigators have been too hasty in their conclu- 
sions; and that they did not investigate the case patiently and scien- 
tifically, — as did their European confreres, — before passing a final 
judgment upon so important a matter? 

Professor Miinsterberg's so-called expose, and the more elaborate 



542 EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 

and pretentious articles of Professors Jastrow and Miller thus sink, it 
seems to me, into a relatively unimportant place. What have they 
brought to light ? This, that Eusapia Palladino tricks when given the 
chance to do so — a fact which all her former investigators knew per- 
fectly well already; and which I told all the sitters she would try 
to do, in a circular letter I sent them before Eusapia Palladino landed 
in America. No new method of trickery was made plain by these so- 
called exposures; nothing but what everybody who had studied the 
case carefully knew already. I realized all the time, as well as I 
realize now, that Eusapia would trick if the opportunity were pre- 
sented; and all her European investigators know this, too. But they 
believe in her powers just as I do, in spite of this. For these reasons, 
therefore, I do not think that further comment is necessary in this 
direction. I shall merely refer the interested reader to my reply to 
Professor Miinsterberg in Myers' ',' Beyond the Borderline of Life" 
(Boston, 1 910); and the reply to the articles of Professors Jastrow and 
Miller in my official Report on the American sittings, published in 
the current numbers of the Annals of Psychical Science (London). 

The object of this long preamble has been to establish the fact that, 
in spite of the petty trickery which has been detected from time to 
time in the" past, Eusapia possesses genuine supernormal powers, and 
I believe that no one who has witnessed a really good seance doubts 
this. Personal observation is, after all, necessary in a case such as this; 
it alone suffices. And, it .seems to me, only those who have attended 
stances, — and especially a considerable number of them, — are entitled 
to a hearing when they speak of this medium and her phenomena. 

Those scientific men in Europe who have become convinced that 
Eusapia Palladino does possess remarkable powers, and that a large 
number of the phenomena witnessed at her seances are genuine, have 
formulated various hypotheses to account for the facts. A brief re- 
view of some of these should be of interest. 

The explanation offered and adopted by the majority of the Euro- 
pean savants is somewhat as follows: The nervous, vital force 
of the medium, which is normally terminated at the periphery, is at 
times projected or propelled beyond the surface of the body, and ex- 
tends out, into space, where it remains more or less under the control 
of the medium's mind. In her normal condition, this is controlled or 
modified, by her conscious mind; in the deeper trance state, it is con- 
trolled by the subconscious mind. It is this exteriorized motive force 
which moves objects at a distance, produces raps, levitations of the 
table, etc. To extend this theory still further, it is conceived that, 
when phantoms appear at Eusapia's seances, — as they do on occasion 
— heads, hands, and even full forms — these phantasmal appearances 
are due to the plastic molding of this exteriorized motive, semi- 
fiuidic force into the shape of a spirit form, as conceived by the 
medium's subliminal mind. Thus, the apparitions appearing at her 



EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 543 

seances are conceived, by Morselli and others, to be the plastic modifi- 
cations of the externalized vital force, — assuming human forai as they 
are mentalized in space by the medium's subliminal consciousness. 

Astonishing as this theory may appear, it is almost the only one 
which is capable of explaining the facts, — once accepted, — outside the 
theory of spiritism. None of the other theories can be said ade- 
quately to cover and explain many of the phenomena which are 
observed at her seances. Yet even this theory, ingenious as it is, is 
hardly capable of covering and explaining all the facts, it seems to me. 
Take, for example, the following incident, narrated by Dr. Venzano, 
well-known to Dr. Morselli, and an excellent observer. He says in part : 

"In spite of the dimness of the light, I could distinctly see Mme. 
Palladino and my fellow sitters. Suddenly I perceived that behind me 
was a form, fairly tall, which was leaning its head on my left shoulder 
and sobbing violently, so that those present could hear the sobs; it 
kissed me repeatedly. I clearly perceived the outlines of this face, 
which touched my own, and I felt the same fine and abundant hair in 
contact with my left cheek, so that I could be quite sure that it was a 
woman. The table then began to move, and by typtology gave the 
name of a close family connection who was known to no one present 
except myself. She had died some time before, and, on account of in- 
compatibility of temperament, there had been serious disagreements 
with her. I was so far from suspecting this typtological response that 
I at first thought this to be a coincidence of name; but while I was 
mentally forming this reflection I felt a mouth, with warm breath, 
touch my left ear and whisper, in a low voice in Genoese dialect, a suc- 
cession of sentences, the murmur of which was audible to the sitters. 
These sentences were broken by bursts of weeping, and their gist 
was to repeatedly implore pardon for injuries done to me with a fulness 
of detail connected with family affairs which could only be known to 
the person in question. The phenomenon seemed so real that I felt 
compelled to reply to the excuses offered me with expressions of affec- 
tion, and to ask pardon in my turn if any resentment of the wrongs 
referred to had been excessive. But I had scarcely uttered the first 
syllables when two hands, with exquisite delicacy, applied themselves 
to my lips, and prevented my continuing. The form then said to me, 
'Thank you,' embraced me, kissed me, and disappeared." 

Now such an experience can hardly be accounted for, it seems to 
me, except by supposing that a real, objective phantom was really 
there; and more than that, that this phantom possessed a mind and 
will of its own, and a memory of past events — everything, in fact, 
which we should usually attribute to a personality. It must be re- 
membered that the form, in this case, not only appeared but spoke; 
and gave information of a character unknown to any one in the circle 
except the "spirit" itself, and the sitter for whom such a communica- 



544 EUSAPIA PALLADINO IN AMERICA 

tion was intended. Can we assume that any "teleplastic phantom," 
created by the medium's subliminal, could impart knowledge unknown 
to it in a language equally unknown? And, in view of the facts, 
how absurd the theory of fraud seems when applied to such incidents ! 
— the explanation offered by the American investigators — that the 
medium releases one hand or one foot, and tickles the ribs of her 
nearest sitter with the free member! How grotesquely inadequate, in 
view of phenomena which have repeatedly been observed. And, if it be 
replied to this, that such phenomena were not seen in America, I reply, 
in turn , that almost as striking manifestations were repeatedly observed , 
— but not at the sittings attended by scientific men. But even had 
they not been seen here, they have been seen in Europe, and these facts 
must surely be taken into account in estimating the evidence. Either 
the American investigators must acknowledge that their theories 
are totally inadequate to account for the facts; or they must ac- 
knowledge that they have not seen any of the more startling phenom- 
ena, such as have frequently been observed before — in which case 
they are not qualified to judge the case or to speak of it with author- 
ity. They must choose either the one horn of the dilemma or the 
other on which to impale themselves; and I give them free choice! 
Thus, it will be seen that, in spite of the so-called "expos6" that 
occurred in this country, the case remains as inexplicable as ever; 
and indeed, it may fairly be said that a great quantity of evidence 
has been accumulated, tending to show that genuine supernormal 
phenomena have been observed; and this side of the question has 
not yet been presented to the public. When the detailed reports 
of these sittings have appeared, I think it will be evident to any fair- 
minded critic that a great mass of evidence in favor of the supernor- 
mal character of these manifestations will have been adduced. For 
my own part, I must say that a fuller knowledge of Eusapia Palla- 
dino and her phenomena has convinced me more than ever that we 
witness, at her stances, physical manifestations of a remarkable 
character; and, after witnessing nearly half a hundred of them, I 
am more than ever convinced that the majority of these phenomena 
are genuine. I am as convinced of the reality of these facts as I am 
of any other fact in life; and they are, to my mind, just as well 
established. 

[Note. It may be thought that I have unduly neglected the fraud detected in 
America, and which I acknowledged in the New York Times, January 4 and 7, 191: i._ I 
have already given my reasons for thinking the American "exposure" inconclusive; 
and I wish only to add a word in explanation of my letters, which may have given rise 
to some misapprehension. I admitted that Eusapia tricked — more or less constantly, 
apparently — during the later stances given by her in America; but this admission does 
not apply to the seances which I attended and controlled, for in these but little trickery 
was ever seen or detected. I am convinced that it did not exist. But the medium 
became exhausted, — as a result of this constant effort to produce phenomena, --lost 
her power, and, apparently, endeavored to reproduce her phenomena by trickery. 
This is by no means a wild supposition, since Professor Lombroso, some years before 
his death, stated his belief that Eusapia was rapidly losing her powers, and that it would 
not be long before they were lost altogether. This prophecy seems to have been fulfilled 
during her American visit. At all events, she has been unable to produce any convm- 
cing phenomena since her departure from this country, in June, 1910. H. C.J 



V 



BIBLIOGRAPHY— (PARTIAL) 



Anonymous. 



Behind the Veil. 

Do the Dead Return? 

(A record in experiences in 
Spiritualism. By a clergy- 
man of England.) 

Light Through the Crannies; or, 

Teachings from the Other Side 

of Life. 

Man and the Spiritual World. 

(By a clergyman of the 

Church of England.) 

Proceedings of The Society for 

Psychical Research. 
Real Ghost Stories. 

(A revised reprint from the 
Christmas and New Year's 
numbers of "The Review of 
Reviews," 189 1-2.) 
Report on Spiritualism of the 
Committee of the London Dia- 
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the evidence, oral and written. 
The Seyhert Commission on 
Spiritualism. 
(This is the report of the 
commission appointed by the 
University of Pennsylvania 
to investigate modern Spir- 
itualism in accordance with 
the bequest of Henry 
Seybert.) 
Two Thousand Years in Spirit 
Life. 
(Highly imaginative narra- 
tive.) 



A Wanderer in the Spirit-land, 
by the spirit author, Fran- 
chezzo. 
(Whatever its source, bril- 
liantly imaginative.) 

Watseka Wonder. 

(This is a case of double con- 
sciousness or obsession, so 
well authenticated that it 
has great value to the stud- 
ent. Dr. Richard Hodgson, 
after careful investigation, 
thinks it a case of spirit 
obsession.) 

Abbott, Lyman. 
The Other Room. 

(While not opposing Spiritu- 
alism, Lyman Abbott does 
not accept it.) 

Anderson. 

How to Hypnotize. 
Austin, B. F., D.D. 

What Converted Me to Spiritu- 
alism. 
(A book that will well repay 
perusal.) 

Bacon, George A. 

Attitude of Scientific Men toward 
Spiritualism. 
("Mr. Bacon is a scholar; a 
fine writer, and dispassion- 
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Babbitt, E. D., M.B., LL.D. 

Religion of Spiritualism. 



545 



546 



BIBLIOGRAPHY (PARTIAL) 



Barrett, Harrison D. 
Lifework of Cora L. V. Rich- 
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("The life of this remark- 
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psychological study. ' ' — Hud- 
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Bartlett, George T. 
The Salem Seer. 

(Reminiscences of Charles H. 
Foster.) 
Beecher, Charles. 

Spiritual Manifestations. 

(Charles Beecher, brother of 
Henry Ward Beecher, be- 
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intelligence outside of the 
flesh.) 
Berrier, L. 

Th-e Cultivation of Personal 
Magnetism. 
Bjornstrom, M. D. 

Hypnotism and Its Present 
Development. 
Billings, F. S. 

Materialism vs. Spiritualism. 
Blackwood, A. 

Spiritualistic Camp in New 
England. 
Bland, Dr. T. A. 

In the World Celestial. 

(A Spiritual Story of Spirit- 
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Blavatsky, H. p. 
Isis Unveiled. 

The Secret Doctrine, (2 vols.) : 
I. Cosmogenesis ; II. Anthro- 
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(Madame Blavatsky was the 
founder of modern theoso- 
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phenomena. " Her books are 
more theosophical than 
Spiritual; uncritical ; her 
quotations of which they 



are largely made up, un- 
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ed by Spiritualists as 
an authority." — Hudson 
Tuttle.) 

Brittan, Emma Harding. 

History of Modern Spiritualism. 

Nineteenth Century Miracles. 

Ghost Land. 

(" Mrs. Brittan claimed to 
have written ttnder spirit 
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altho they have the charac- 
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land ' is a flight of the imagin- 
ation.") 

Brittan. 

Battle-Ground of the Spiritual. 
Man and His Relations. 

(Prof. S. B. Brittan: A pop- 
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Universalist clergyman be- 
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Brown, John. 

Mediumistic Experiences. 

(Remarkable psychic experi- 
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Brown, of anti-slavery fame.) 
Caylor, E. H. 

The Late Dr. Sedgwick and the 
Spirit Medium. 
Chambers, Rev. Arthur. 

Our Life After Death. 
Chase, Hon. Warren. 
Gist of Spiritualism. 
Clarke, Dr. Edward H. 

Visions. 
Clark, G. T. 

On the Threshold: a Psychic 
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CoATEs, James. 
How to Magnetize. 

("A good manual and hand- 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY (PARTIAL) 



547 



CoE, Geo. A. 

The Spiritual Life. 

CoNANT, Mrs. J. H. 

Flashes of Light from the Spirit 
Land. 

Invocations. 

(The last mentioned is a 
collection of prayers offered 
by more than one hundred 
"spirits" at the Free circles 
of the Banner of Light, at 
which for many years "she 
was the medium, and ranked 
among the best for that 
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Conway, M. D. 
Spiritualism. 

CORRANCE, H. C. 

Spiritualism and Catholicism. 

CouEs, Elliott. 

Biogen. 

(A speculation on the origin 
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Signs of the Times from the 
Standpoint of the Scientist. 
(Elliott Coues was a promin- 
ent scientific scholar connec- 
ted with the Smithsonian In- 
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carried on for some years a 
series of investigations of 
spiritual phenomena. He ac- 
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the spirit hypothesis.) 

Crookes, Sir William, F. R. S. 
Researches in the Phenomena of 
Spiritualism,. 
(This famous scientist recog- 
nized the existence of a psy- 
chic force, and without ag- 
gressively adopting any the- 
ory, gave to the public what 
he found to be facts. Con- 



cerning his investigations 
made in the early seventies, 
he has reasserted they estab- 
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evidence of outside intelli- 
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Crowe, Catharine. 
Night Shade of Nature. 

(Remarkable because written 
before the advent of modern 
Spirittialism, yet taking simi- 
lar views of spirit life.) 

Crowell, Eugene, M.D. 

Primitive Christianity and Mod- 
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Spirit World: Its Inhabitants, 
Nature and Philosophy. 
(Eugene Crowell strongly ad- 
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("In ' Primitive Christianity' 
he attempts exhaustively to 
prove Spiritualism by the 
Bible. It is a storehouse of 
facts." — Hudson Tuttle.) 

Dailey, Abram H. 
Mollie Fancher. 

(Abram H. Dailey is a New 
York lawyer of prominence, 
and was formerly Judge in 
Brooklyn, New York. He 
is an uncompromising advo- 
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Davis, A. J. 

The Great Harmonia. 
Death and the After -Life. 
Diakka and Their Earthly Vic- 



548 



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Philosophy of Spirit Intercourse. 

Views of Our Heavenly Home. 
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when in the trance or hyp- 
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Dawson, M. M., and J. E. Allen. 

Implications of Spiritualism. 

Delanne, Gabriel. 

Evidence for a Future Life. 
(Translated and edited by 
H. A. Dallas. This is a 
recent work written in 
France, and favors the spir- 
itualistic .hypothesis. An 
able work.) 

De Morgan, Mrs. 

From Matter to Spirit. 
An early work, strongly to be 
recommended; with a valua- 
ble preface by the late Prof. 
De Morgan. 
(Mrs. De Morgan's attitude 
was that of a critic of Spir- 
itualism, but inclined to the 
Spiritualistic hypothesis.) 

De Morgan, Prof. 
Budget of Paradoxes. 

(Professor De Morgan accep- 
ted Spiritualism as a working 
hypothesis.) 

Denton, William. 

The Soul of Things. 

(In Denton's work the phil- 
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extremes. It strongly advo- 
cates the spiritualistic hy- 
pothesis.) 



Desertis, V. C. 

Psychic Philosophy as a Foun- 
dation of a Religion of Natural 
Law. 
(With Introductory by Alfred 
Russel Wallace. Is favorable 
to the spiritualistic hypoth- 
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Du Prel, Carl. 

Philosophy of Mysticism (Trans- 
lated by C. C. Massey). 
(Valuable to the serious 
thinker on the subject of 
Spiritualism. It favors the 
spiritualistic hypothesis.) 
Doten, Lizzie. 
Inner Mysteries. 
Poems from the Inner Life. 
(Written inspirationally.) 
Duff and Allen. 

Psychic Research and Gospel 
Miracles. 
(Radically spiritualistic. 
Gives account of many mate- 
rialization seances attended 
by the authors, and aims to 
show that Christianity and 
Spiritualism are in harmony.) 
DuGuiD, David. 

Hafed, Prince of Persia: His 
Experience in Earth-Life and 
Spirit-Life. 
("Duguid is a wonderful 
psychic. The skeptic will 
find in ' Hafed, ' a weird and 
strange story ; the Spiritualist 
will be charmed by its facts 
and philosophy. ' ' — Hudson 
Tuttie.) 
Edmonds, Judge, and Dr. War- 
ren. 
The Sacred Circle. 

(Strongly favors Spiritual- 
ism.) 
Edmonds, Judge, and Dr. Dex- 
ter. 
Spiritualism. 

(In favor of Spiritualism.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY (PARTIAL) 



549 



Edmonds, Judge. 

Letters and facts on Spiritualism, 
These are experiences and 
utterances of Spiritualists in 
spiritualistic circles. 
("Judge Edmonds received 
his spirit messages, and 
pursued his investigations 
through the mediumship of 
his daughter, until he became 
a medium himself. His writ- 
ings were very influential at 
the time of their publica- 
tion." — Hudson Tuttle.) 
Evans, F. P. 
Psychography. 

(Mr. Evans is a leading slate- 
writing medium.) 
Faber, Fred. William. 
Spiritual Conferences. 

Flammarion, Camille. 
The Unknown. 

("Well known French as- 
tronomer and poptilar writer 
on astronomy. Pursued a 
remarkable course of psychic 
research." — Hudson Tuttle.) 

Flournoy, T. 

From India to the Planet Mars. 
(Idealistic.) 
French, Hon. A. B. 

Gleanings from, the Rostrum: 
Lectures on Spiritualism. 
Fuller, M.D., Geo. A. 
Wisdom of the Ages. 

("Written automatically.") 
Gibier, Paul, M.D. 
Psychism.. 

(Mr. Gibier was an enthusi- 
astic biologist, and superin- 
tendent of the Pasteur Insti- 
tute in New York City. Mr. 
Tuttle, speaking of the book, 
says : " The value of his book 
has not been appreciated.") 



Gridley, Dr. 

Astonishing Facts from the 
Spirit World. 

Grimes, Stanley. 

Mysteries of the Head and 
Heart. 
(Grimes explains Spiritual- 
ism by fraud and mesmerism. 
He is pretentious and super- 
ficial." — Hudson Tuttle.) 

Gurney, E., M.A., 

F. W. H. Myers, M.A., and 

F. Podmore, M.A. 

Phantasms of the Living. 

(E. Gurney occupies toward 
Spiritualism the point of 
view of F. W. H. Myers in 
his late work, "Human Per- 
sonality," and of Prof. Hys- 
lop. This work is critical.) 

Hammond, Rev. C. 

Thomas Paine in the Spiritual 
World. 
(Rev. Hammond, after wit- 
nessing the manifestations of 
the Fox sisters, when the 
rappings began, became a 
believer, and medium for 
writing. His book purports 
to have been written by the 
spirit of Paine through his 
hand. It is a sample of the 
earliest Spiritual writing.) 

Hare, Prof. Robert. 

Spiritualism Scientifically Dem- 
onstrated. 
(Professor Hare was an emi- 
nent scientist, professor of 
chemistry in the University 
of Pennsylvania. He made 
many psychic experiments, 
having become a strong be- 
liever in Spiritualism. "His 
carefulness in experimenta- 
tion, and accuracy of obser- 
vation, have never been ex- 
ceeded." — Hudson Tuttle.) 



550 



BIBLIOGRAPHY (PARTIAL) 



Hartman, Joseph. 

Facts and Mysteries of Spirit- 
ism. 
Haweis, Rev. H. R. 

SpirituaUsm and Christianity 
(Address) . 
(Haweis was a strong believer 
in the spiritualistic hypothe- 
sis.) 
Hemstreet, William. 

Electricity and the Resurrection; 
or, the Soul and Science. 

Home, D.D. 

Incidents in My Life. 

Lights and Shadows of Spiritu- 
alism. 
(From a medium's point of 
view exposes the frauds and 
follies of Spiritualism. A 
prominent and remarkable 
Spiritualist medium, and he 
strongly supports Spiritu- 
alism.) 
Home, D.D., Mrs. 

D.D. Home: His Life and Mis- 
sion. 

The Gift of D. D. Home. 

(This atithor was the wife of 
the celebrated medium, D. D. 
Home. Her books are strong- 
ly Spiritualistic.) 

Hopps, Rev. J. Page. 

Death a Delusion. 

HowiTT, William. 

History of the Supernatural. 
(Strictly historical.) 
Hudson, T. J. 

The Divine Pec'gree of AT an. 
A Scientific Demonstration of the 
Future Life. 

The Law of Psychic Phenomena. 
(This author died in 1903, 
He was a voluminous writer 
against the spiritualistic hy- 
pothesis. He explained 



much of psychic phenomena 
on the hypothesis of the sub- 
jective mind.) 
Hull, Rev. Moses. 

Encyclopedia of Biblical Spir- 
itualism. 
Question Settled. Biblical and 
Modern Spiritualism Com- 
pared. 
("These will prove valuable 
books to those who would 
interpret the Bible by Spir- 
itualism and explain spiritual 
manifestations by the Bible. " 
— Hudson Tuttle.) 
Huntley, Florence. 

The Great Psychological Crime. 
(Opposed to mediumship 
. from the viewpoint of a 
Spiritualist. Advocates the 
thought that mediumship is 
a species of hypnotism, and 
is destructive to the selfhood 
of the individual; favors the 
direct inspirational method.) 
Hyslop, James H. 

Proceedings S.P.R., Part XLL, 
Vol. XV L, Oct., 1 90 1. 
(This author is a prominent 
member of The Society for 
Psychical Research, late pro- 
fessor in Columbia Univer- 
sity. Views psychic phe- 
nomena from the viewpoint 
of an exacting critic, accept- 
ing Spiritualism as a working 
hypothesis.) 
Irving, Kate. 

Clear Light from the Spirit 
World. 
(Kate Irving gives her ex- 
perience in attending a num- 
ber of seances, and was a 
convert to Spiritualism.) 
Jacolliot. 

Spiritisme dans le monde. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY (PARTIAL) 



55 



JUDSON, AbBY a. 

Why a Spiritualist. 

(Miss Judson is the daughter 
of Adoniram Judson, one of 
the first missionaries to In- 
dia.) 
Kant, Immanuel. 

Dreams of a Spirit-Seer. 

(This author is the well- 
known German philosopher. 
His "Dreams of a Spirit- 
Seer" refers largely to the 
claims of Swedenborg that 
he had spiritual visions be- 
yond those of the senses.) 
Kardec. 

Book of Mediums. 

The Spirits Book. 

(Kardec was an a,rdent be- 
liever in Spiritualism, and a 
writer of much influence in 
Paris, his home, and through- 
out France, and his influence 
has extended into other coun- 
tries. He and his school 
advocate reincarnation.) 
Kiddle. 

Spiritual Communications. 
(For years superintendent of 
the schools of New York 
City; he accepted Spiritual- 
ism and strongly advocated 
it.) 
King, Maria M. 

Principles of Nature. 

Real Life in Spirit-Land. 

Mediumship — Experiences o f 
the Author. 

Spiritual Philosophy versus Di- 
abolism,. 
("These works are among the 
best specimens of inspira- 
tional writing. ' ' — Hudson 
Tuttle.) 
LiLLiE, Arthur. 

Modern Mystics and Modern 
Magic. 



Lodge, Sir Oliver. 

Address. Proceedings S. P. R., 
PartXLIIL, Vol. XV IL 
(Sir Oliver Lodge is now pres- 
ident of The Society for Psy- 
chical Research. He con- 
siders all psychic phenomena 
from the viewpoint of a 
critic. Like F. W. H. Myers 
and Richard Hodgson, he 
accepts Spiritualism as a 
working hypothesis.) 
Marryatt, Florence. 
There Is No Death. 

(Strongly supports Spiritu- 
alism. The book is an ac- 
count of the author's own 
investigations.) 
Mason, R. O. 

Telepathy and the Subliminal 
Self. 

Massey, Gerald. 

Concerning Spiritualism. 

(Mr. Massey was a powerful 
advocate of the spiritualistic 
hypothesis.) 

Maynard, Mrs. Nettie Col- 
burn. 
Was Abraham Lincoln a Spir- 
itualist . 
("Containing accounts of 
seances given to the Presi- 
dent's family and distin- 
guished officials." — Hudson 
Tuttle.) 

McDonald, Rev. W. 

Spiritualism Identical with An- 
cient Sorcery, New Testament 
Demonology, and Modern 
Witchcraft. 

Meacham, Leslie J. 

Lessons in Hypnotism and the 
Use of Suggestion. 
Meynell, Alice C. (Thompson). 

The Spirit of Place, 



SS"^ 



BIBLIOGRAPHY (PARTIAL) 



Moll, Albert. 

The Science of Hypnotism. 
(An exhaustive work.) 

Myers, F. W. H. 

Human Personality and Its Sur- 
vival of Bodily Death. 
(F. W. H. Myers was one of 
the most profound psycholo- 
gists of this generation ; died 
in 1 901; was one of the 
founders of The Society for 
Psychical Research; was its 
president for a time, and for 
many years its secretary; 
was the author of the hy- 
pothesis of the subliminal 
self; and in his work, 
"Human Personality," has 
been the first to classify the 
immense multitude of psy- 
chic facts -that have been, 
gathered by The Society for 
Psychical Research.) 

Neal, Virgil E., A. M., LL.D., 

and C. S. Clark, M.A., Editors. 
Hypnotism and Hypnotic Sug- 
gestion. 

Newton, A. E. 

"Ministry of Angels" Realized. 

Olcott, Henry S. 

People from the Other World. 
("A sensational report." — 
Hudson Tuttle.) 
(Mr. Olcott is a believer in 
spiritualistic phenomena, and 
was, with Mme. Blavatsky, 
the founder of modern theos- 
ophy.) 

Owen, R. Dale. 

Land between this World and 

the Next, Debatable. 
Footfalls on the Boundary of 
Another World. 
(R. Dale Owen was a scientist 



of international reputation ; a 
thorough believer in the spirit 
hypothesis.) 

Peebles, J. M. 

The Christ Question Settled. 

Itnmortality, Our Home and 
Employments Hereafter. 

Seers of the Ages, The. 

Who are the Spiritualists. 
(J. M. Peebles is a volumin- 
ous writer in favor of the 
spiritualistic hypothesis. His 
writings rank high among 
Spiritualists in this country 
and Europe. He is now 
nearly ninety years of age.) 

Phelps, E. Stuart. 

Gates Ajar. 

Beyond the Gates. 

(In " Gates Ajar" this author 
treats the spirit world in a 
very matter-of-fact way.) 

Plumptre, E. H. 

Spirits in Prison; and other 
studies on the life after death. 

Podmore, Frank, M. A. 

Apparitions and Thought Trans- 
ference. 
(An Examination of the evi- 
dence for telepathy.) 

History of Spiritualism. 

Modern Spiritualism. 

(Frank Podmore is opposed 
to the spiritualistic theory; 
is one of the ablest critical 
writers connected with The 
Society for Psychic Research; 
and from the same series of 
investigations and facts ar- 
rives at almost diametrically 
opposed conclusions from 
those of Myers.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY (PARTIAL) 



SS3 



Putnam, Allen. 

Immortality D emonstr ated 
through the Mediumship of 
Mrs. J. H. Conant. 
Bible Marvel Workers. 
Natty, a Spirit. 
Spirit Works Real but Not 

Miraculous. 
Mesmerism, Spiritualism., 
Witchcraft and Miracle. 
("Allen Putnam was an able 
Unitarian minister of Boston, 
and made use of the Bible to 
prove Spiritualism. ' ' — Hud- 
son Tuttle.) 

QUACKENBOS, JOHN DuNCAN, 

M.D. 
Hypnotism in Mental and Moral 
Culture. 

Randall. 

Mesmerism and Hypr^otism, or 
Vital Magnetic Power. 

Richmond, A. B. 

Review of the Report of the 
Seybert Commission. 
("Richmond was one of the 
most able criminal lawyers in 
Pennsylvania." — Hudson 
Tuttle.) 

Robinson, Wm. E. 

Spirit Slate-Writing and Kin- 
dred Phenomena. 

Sargent, Epes. 

A Scientific Basis of Spiritual- 
ism. 
Planchette; or, The Despair of 
Science. 
(It is claimed that the latter 
volume gives a full account 
of modem Spiritualism. The 
author was an able and 
standard expositor of the 



underlying principles of Spir- 
itualism.) 

Savage, Minot J. 

Life Beyond Death. 

Psychics: Facts and Theories. 

Spiritualism. 

Can Telepathy Explain? 

(Dr. Savage explains psychic 
phenomena by the hypothe- 
sis of telepathy and spirit 
communication. ) 

ScHOFiELD, Alfred T., M.D.. 
M.R.C.S. 

The Springs of Character 
The Unconscious Mind. 

Sextus, Carl. 

Hypnotism and Somnambulism. 
(A plain and practical pres- 
entation of these subjects.) 

Shelhamer, Mary T. (now Mrs. 
Longley) . 
Life and Labors in the Spirit 

World. 
Outside the Gates. 

(Mrs. Mary T. Longley has 
been for ten years secretary 
of the National Spiritual 
Association.) 

SiNNETT, A. P. 
The Occult World. 
The Rationale of Mesmerism. 
(Sinnett treats Spiritualism 
from the viewpoint of a the- 
osophist.) 

Smith, Uriah. 

Modern Spiritualism. Considered. 
(Uriah Smith believes Spirit- 
ualism to be the work of evil 
spirits, and strongly opposes 
it as exceedingly dangerous.) 



554 



BLIOGRAPHY (PARTIAL) 



Stainton-Moses, William, M. A. 
(Oxon.) 

Higher Aspects of Spiritualism. 
Psychography (A treatise on one 
of the objective forms of psy- 
chic phenomena.) 
Spirit Identity. 

Spirit Teachings (Through the 
mediumship of William 
Stainton-Moses.) 
(Rev. W. Stainton Moses, 
M.A.: A medium of very high 
rank who gained and held 
the confidence of F. W. H. 
Myers, and others of the 
founders of The Society for 
Psychical Research. For a 
number of years Mr. Moses 
was editor of "The Light," 
the leading spiritualistic 
paper in London.) 

Stead, W. T. 

Letters from Julia. 

("A series of letters as to the 
life beyond the grave, re- 
ceived by automatic writing 
from one who has gone be- 
fore." Mr. Stead is the well- 
known editor of the English 
"Review of Reviews." He 
writes from the viewpoint of 
a Spiritualist.) 

Stewart and Tait. 
The Unseen Universe. 

("The authors dismiss spir- 
itualism as "unsatisfactory 
yet advocate its principles in 
a manner entertaining to its 
believers." — Hudson Tuttle.) 

Street. 

The Hidden Way Across the 
Threshold. 



Strong, C. A. 

Why the Mind Has a Body. 
(Very suggestive along phys- 
iological and psychological 
lines.) 

Sweetser. 

In Distance and in Dream. 

Talmadge, General; Linton, 
Charles. 
Healing of the Nations. 

("This work was inspira- 
tionally written. The thought 
is exalted and the style clear 
and unaffected , " — H udson 
Tuttle.) 

Tappan, Cora V. (Cora L. V. 
Richmond) . 
Discourses. 

("This author is a believer in 
Spiritualism. The discour- 
ses were given in unconscious 
trance." — Hudson Tuttle.) 

Theobald, Morell. 

Spirit Workers in the Home 
Circle. 

Tuttle, Emma Rood. 

The Lyceum Guide. 

(A manual for organizing and 
conducting Progressive Lyce- 
ums, or Spiritual Sunday- 
Schools.) 

From Soul to Soul: Poems. 

Asphodel Blooms and Other 
Offerings. 
(Epes Sargent in a criticism 
of her works, calls Mrs. Tut- 
tle, "The sweet singer of the 
Spiritual dispensation.") 



BIBLIOGRAPHY (PARTIAL) 



5SS 



TuTTLE, Hudson. 
Arcana of Nature. 
Arcana of Spiritualism. 

Career of the God-Idea in His- 
tory. 

Career of the Christ-Idea in His- 
tory. 

Life in Two Spheres. 

Mediumship and Its Laws; Its 
Conditions and Developments. 

Origin and Antiquity of Man. 

Philosophy of Spirit. 

Psychic Science. 

Religion of Man and Ethics of 
Science. 
(Tuttle : A writer who ranks 
high among Spiritualists. 
His books are ably written, 
and are of a strong philo- 
sophic spirit. They are what 
are known as books inspira- 
tionally written.) 

TwiNG, Carrie. 

Lizeheth; A Story of Two 
Worlds. 
("A pleasant story inculcat- 
ing the philosophy of Spiritu- 
alism." — Hudson Tuttle.) 

Underhill, a. Leah. 

The Missing Link in Modern 
Spiritualism. 
(Mrs. Underhill is one of the 
" three Fox sisters," her book 
is one of personal experi- 
ences.) 

Underwood, Sara A. 

Automatic or Spirit Writings 
(With other psychic experi- 
ences.) 

("Mrs. Underwood became 
an automatic writer when 
she was yet a skeptic, and 
her work is not only unique. 



but is of surpassing value 
because of the evidences it 
bears of its truthfulness." — 
Hudson Tuttle. 'i 

Walker, W. L. 

Spirit and the Incarnation. 

Wallace, Alfred Russel,F.R.S. 

Defence of Modern Spiritualism. 

(With American Preface by 

Epes Sargent.) 

If a Man Die, Shall He Live 

Again. (A lecture.) 
On Miracles and Modern Spir- 
itualism. 
(Alfred Russel Wallace is an 
illustrious scientist of Great 
Britain ; co-discoverer with 
Darwin of evolution; for 
some forty years an ardent 
believer in Spiritualism.) 

Walrond, George. 

Guide to Investigate Spiritual- 
ism. 

Watson, Rev. Samuel. 

Religion of Spiritualism; Its 
Phenomena and Philosophy. 

The Clock Struck One. 

The Clock Struck Three. 

(Samuel Watson until past 
middle age was a minister in 
the Methodist Church, in 
which he rose to the rank of 
a distinguished bishop. He 
became interested in Spiritu- 
alism, an ardent believer, and 
published a magazine devoted 
to the cause.) 

White, Wm. 

Emanuel Swedenborg, His Life 
and Writings. 



556 



BIBLIOGRAPHY (PARTIAL) 



Whiting, Lilian. 
After Death. 
Spiritual Significance. 
A Study of Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning. 
(This author writes from the 
viewpoint of a Spiritualist.) 

Wolfe, N. B. 
Starthng Facts in Modern Spir- 
itualism. 

Wyld, George, M.D. 
Spiritual Dynamics. 



ZOLLNER, Prof. JOHANN C. F. 

Transcendental Physics. 

(Professor ZoUner was a pro- 
found scientist at the Univer- 
sity of Leipzig; in the seven- 
ties he made extensive ex- 
periments in Spirituahsm 
through the famous Ameri- 
can medium, Henry Slade. 
He believed the intelligences 
were supra-mtmdane, and 
explained the phenomena on 
the hypothesis of the fourth 
dimention. 



INDEX 



Aksakof, N., and Lost Will 193 

Apparition and My Aunt 28 

Apparitions 38° 

Arab Guide, "Spirit" of My 211 

"Aunt Eliza's " Telepathy 213 

Author, A Spirit Commission Given. . 93 
Author Gets Very Successful Series 

of Tests 217 

Author's "Very Bad Spell" 93 

Author Kindly "Warned" 66 

Author Makes Threefold Request. . . . 488 

Author Meets Very Sensitive Spirit. . . 103 
Author's Brother's Experiment in 

Materializations 425 

Author's Brother's Experiments in 

Telepathy 232 

Author's Btisiness Friend Makes Spirit 

Photographic Tests 454 

Author Sees Materializations Under 

Test Conditions 426 

Author's Experience with Fraud 74-77 

Author's Experience with Mrs. Mar- 
garet Fox Kane 237 

Author's Friend Tells Strange Story. . 3 So 

Author's "Mother" Gives a Test 443 

Author's Niece Works Successful 

Tests 227 

Automatic Writing, Sir Oliver Lodge 

Believes in 216 

Auto-Suggestion 82 

Balfour's, Premier, Sister Helps 383 

Beecher and Ingersoll 136 

"Beecher" Inquiry About "Mite"... 159 
Beecher's Belief, "There's Something 

in it" 78 

Beecher's Reported Explanation 183 

Beecher's "Phantom Face" 179 

Beecher's Strange Vision iii 

Bellachini's Conjurer, Testimony. ... 53 

Bible and Spirits 67 

Bible and Spiritualism 65 

Bibliography 523 

Bishop, A Dead, Returns 394 

Bishop, Washington Irving, and La- 

bouchere 81 

Blavatslcy, Mme., Why Her Miracles? 192 

Book Read When Shut 258 



Booth, General, Talks with Spirit 

Wife 14s 

Brewster, Sir David, Not Consistent. . 114 

Brittan's, Dr. S. B., Explanation 182 

"Brooklyn Medium," Age, etc 138 

Brougham's, Lord, Vision 392 

Cashiers, Statement of, of Funk & 

Wagnalls's Company About "Mite" 166 

Character a Growth 30 

Character Growth on Both Sides 

of Grave 47 

Child Saved from Fire 267 

"Christ a Materialized Spirit" 40 

Christ Hindered by Skepticism 83 

"Christ the Chiefest Medium" 31 

Church Hurt by Spiritualism ? Is the 125 

Clairaudience 309 

Clairvoyance 217 

Clairvoyance, A. R. Wallace 272 

Communication, Law of 98 

Conjurers 50 

Corpse "Sassing" Back 93 

Credulous, Spiritualists Too 21 

"Crist's Identification" 212 

Crookes' Bell Enters Closed Room. . . 341 

Crookes' Chief Experiments 319 

Crookes' Classified Results of Experi- 
ments 330 

Crookes' Explanation of Telepathy. . . 518 
Crookes' Final Report on "Phenom- 
ena Called Spiritual" 328 

Crookes' Firm Faith 423 

Crookes Gets Reading without Eyes. 256 
Crookes Gets Weight Without Con- 
tact 325 

Crookes on Theory of Fraud 347 

Crookes Photographs Spirit 420 

Crookes' Purpose 326 

Crookes Repeats Belief 156 

Crookes Sees Human Bodies Lifted. . . 332 

Crookes Sees Man Resting in Air 343 

Crookes Sees MateriaHzations336-338-4i3 
Crookes Sees Weights Moved at a 

Distance 332 

Crookes, Sir William, and Miss Kate 

Fox 331 



557 



558 



INDEX 



Crookes Tests for Intelligence 339 

Crookes Tests Spirit's Pulse and 

Heart 422 

Crookes.Wallace Denies Report About 156 

Dailey's, Judge A.H., Startling Expe- 
riences with Home Medium 259 

Dead, Do They Return to Earth? 391 

Directions for Spirit Circle 520 

Diss-Debar, Mme 23 

Dog of the Wesleys 400 

Dr. Savage Sees Great Physical Force 368 

Evolution, Argument from 181 

Experience, Very Odd 240 

Fact, Astounding, Verified 383 

Faculties, Rudimentary 10 

Faith, Antecedent, Essential 80 

"Faith of Itself is Nothing" 200 

Fancher, Mollie 407 

"Fool's World" 26 

Fraud, Much, But What Else? 78 

Frauds, Mediumistic, Variety of. . . 74-235 

Funk, B. F., Letter About "Mite"... . i66 

"Gabriel, Subpoena" 42 

"George Pelham" of S. P. R. "Makes 

"Things Lively" 450 

Ghost of a Living Person 3 S3 

Gladstone and Psychic Research 9 

God, How Seen 49 

God, Nothing Supernatural, But 25 

Goethe Prophetically Sees Himself. . . 191 

Goethe's Humility 7 

Guthrie's, Malcom, Series of Tele- 
pathic Experiments 284 

Hair in a Sealed Envelope Described.. 223 
Harden's, Maximilian, Defense of 

Anna Rothe 190 

Hare, Robert, "Facts Beat Me" 130 

Haunted House, A 395 

Hodgson and "Watseka Wonder". . . 412 

Holmes', O. W., Experience 270 

Houdin's, Conjurer, Testimony 51 

Hudson, Dr., Applies "Law of Psy- 
chic Phenomena" 445 

Hvidson on Faith 81 

Hudson's Inconclusive Reasoning .... 379 

Hudson's Law of Psychic Phenomena 209 

Huxley, Child Before a Fact 6 

Hypnotism Won't Explain 356 

Impersonation May Be Unconscious 180 

Impressions without Visibility 43 8 

Individual, Each, a Free Agent 38 

Individuality Inviolable 3 9-1 So 

Ingersoll, Col. Robert, Materializes (?) 33 
Insanity and Spiritualism 87 



James, Prof. William, Finds Bank- 
book 198 

James', Prof. W., Experiments with 

Mrs. Piper 101-241 

James',Prof.W., Letter About "Mite" 178 

" Janette Lost " 311 

" John Rakestraw " 159 

Kant, Immanuel, and Swedenborg. . 186 

Kant's Fear of Ridicule , 190 

Kellar's, Conjurer, Testimony 52 

Keller, Helen, Teaches Us 50 

Knorr, Dr. L., and Lost Note 195 

Krause's, Arthur G., Photographic 

Test 46s 

Letters of Psychologists 493 

Letters Sealed, Yet Contents Read . . 217 
Lindsay, Lord, (Scientist), Witnesses 

Marvel 347 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, on Myers' Spirit 

Writing 216 

Lodge's Reports Experiments 283 

Macdonald, Wilson 33 

Marsh, Luther R 23 

Massey's, Gerald, Home Experience. 62 

Materialization, Carefiol Test 424 

Materialization and Crookes 413 

Materializations, Myers' Explanation 

of 435 

Medium's, Brooklyn, Statement .... 493 

Medium a Dynamo 151 

Medium Exhatisted, W. S. Moses' 

Tests 434 

Mediums Bom, Not Made 148 

Medium's, Converted, Warning 63 

Mediumship, Is It Hurtful? 57 

Mediums, Personal Equation of 90 

"Mediums Should be Guarded " 59 

" Mediums Shovild be Kept Pure "... 124 

Mediums, Some, Grow Rich 77 

Mediums, Why Necessary? 147 

Mind, Subjective 27, 189 

Mint, U. S., Answers Coin Inquiry 164 
Mitchell, Dr. Weir, Gives Remark- 
able Case 403 

Morse, Doctor, Spirit 265 

Moses' Directions for Circle 520 

" Mother " Makes Good Test 234 

Miiller, Max, and Mme. Blavatsky ... 192 

Myers', Frederic, Belief 13 

Myers, Frederic, Gives Spirit Auto- 
graph 485 

Myers, Frederic, His Facsimile Writ- 
ing 216 

Myers', Frederic, Prediction 18 

Myers', Frederic, Testimony 154 



INDEX 



559 



Myers', Frederic, Test with Mrs. 
Piper 246 

Note, Promissory, Found Through 
Spirit 194 

Obsessions 402 

" Paine's, Thomas," Poor Memory. . 44 
Palladino's, Eusapia, American 

Seances 523 

Parker's, Dr. Joseph, Talks with 

Spirit Wife 144 

Personahties, Secondary 402 

Phantom Lights Seen b^' Rev. W. 

Stainton-Moses 433 

Phelps' , Austin, Warning 73 

Photographs by Dr. Pierce When 

Alone 478 

Photographs in Unopened Box 474 

Pierce, Dr., and Spirit Photography . 454 

Pierce, Dr., Closely Catechised 467 

Pierce, Dr., Photographic Tests. ... 473 

Pierce's, Dr., Photographic Report. 457 

Piper, Mrs., Detectives Watch 247 

Piper, Mrs., in England 248 

Piper, Mrs., Tests for Prof. James. . 241 

Piper, Mrs., Myers Says Is Honest. . . 249 

Piper, Mrs., with Dr. Savage 251 

Podmore Reasons Loosely 281 

Prayer, A, Who Is Its Author? 490 

Premonition Correct 267 

Problem, The 8 

Psychical Research, Society for 14 

Psychic Force Aside from Muscular 

Action 318 

Psychologists' Answers, Tabulated . . 177 

Psychologists' Letters 493 

Psychologists Questioned About 

" Mite " 176 

Questions Answered About " Mite ". . 174 

Reid, H. A., Gets Strong " Photo- 
graphic Tests " 45S 

Religion, True 152 

Request, Threefold, to the Pubhc. . . . 488 
Results, Surprising, in Telepathy 

Given by Sir Oliver Lodge 289 

Reynolds, Mary 403 

Roney, Irvin.g S., Affidavit of 165 

Rothe, Mme. Anna, Sentenced 191 

Savage's, Dr. Minot J., Daughter's 
Experience 253 

Savage, Dr., Finds Son's Papers 197 

Savage, Dr., Gives Verified Case of 
Identity 443 

Savage, Dr., Sends Spirits on Jour- 
neys 254 



Savage's, Dr., Tests with Mrs. Piper. 251 
Scientist a Victim of Auto-Sugges- 

tion IIS 

Scientists, Letter from loi 

Scientists, Unscientific 1 13 

Seance Failed 104 

Self -Projection 387 

Seybert Commission 50 

Seybert Fund, A Great Wrong Done . 117 
Shakespeare, Curious Spirit Informa- 
tion About ; . . . . 140 

Sidgwick, Prof., Gives Spirit Auto- 
graph 486 

Skepticism Need not be Hostile 33 

Skeptics Predispose Themselves Un- 
favorably 38 

Slade, Prof., and Zollner 27s 

Slate Test by Dr. T. J. Hudson 377 

Slate- Writing Severely Tested 369 

Socrates' Spirit Guide 310 

Spirit Autograph of Leading Clergy- 
man Tested by Bank Experts 484 

Spirit, A Very Sensitive 103 

Spirit Circles, Hard-headedness Re- 
quired at 30 

Spirit Communication Commonplace. 95 
Spirit Communication Difficult ... .58, 86 
Spirit Communication in Bible Times 39 
Spirit Communication, Law of Fail- 
ure of 105 

Spirit Communication to Be Judged 

by Its Best 99 

Spirit Communings, How to Get Best 100 

Spirit Contradicts Spirit 149 

Spirit Control Grows Weary 34 

Spirit Controls of Brooklyn Medium. 158 

Spirit Criticises the Church 120 

Spirit Detective 21 

Spirit Explains Inaccuracies 89 

" Spirit from Mars " 96 

" Spirit," of My ArabGuide Identifies 

Himself 211 

Spirit Identified by Handwriting .... 484 

Spirit Identification 257 

Spirit Identity 442 

Spirit Identity, Tests by Prof. Hyslop 486 
Spirit Identity Through Rev. W. S. 

Moses 446 

Spirit, Negro, Very Human 46 

Spirit of Murderer Enters a Medium . 6 1 
Spirit Photographs, Between Test 

Plates 461 

Spirit Photographs, Series by Dr. 

Reid 478 

Spirit Photographs without Camera . 457 

Spirit Photography 451 

Spirit Photography, Trick 45 1 

Spirit " Quarrel " 14 



560 



INDEX 



spirits, Agreement with 239 

" Spirits Also Learners " 202 

Spirits, Contradictory 55 

Spirits, Evil 5 

Spirits, Evil, Work of 60 

Spirits, Good, Exhort to Virtue 69 

Spirits, Help from Communication 

with 129 

Spirits, Matter-of-Fact People 137 

Spirits, Mischievous 47, 237 

Spirit-Talk Against Materialism 127 

Spirit-Talks at " Widow's Mite Circle" 198 

Spirit-Talks Often Inaccurate 88 

Spirit-Talk, " Frivolity at Sittings " . 29 

Spirit-Talk, ' ' God's Restoring Love " 135 

Spirit-Talk, " Higher Criticism " . .\ . 133 

Spirit-Talk, " Kind to Animals " . . . . 138 

Spirit-Talk Often Repellant 44 

Spirit-Talk," Service Is Godly " 139 

Spirit-Talk, " Spirit Communication 

Enlarges Self -Respect" 143 

Spirit-Talk, " Spiritualism Church's 

Greatest Ally " 141 

Spirit-Talks, " Laws of Nature" 199 

Spirit-Talks, " Reincarnation " 204 

■' Spirit-Talks to Clergymen " 120 

Spiritualism a Butt for Ridicule 92 

Spiritualism a " Suspect " 4 

"Spiritualism Conclusively Dis- 
proved " 72 

Spiritualism Judged by Its Fruits .... 131 

" Spiritualism Key to the Bible " . . . . 1 26 

Spiritualism Often Too Flippant 28 

Spiritualists Critical 35 

Spiritualists Should Make Investiga- 
tion Easy 36 

Spiritualists, Some, Too Superstitious 25 

Spirit Wires Crossed 22 

Spirit Writing Explained 440 

S. P. R. Tests Telepathy 282 

Stainthrop, Miss, Hears Brother 

Thousand Miles 311 

Swedenborg Finds Receipt 187 

Swedenborg " Sees " Stockholm Fire 188 

Telepathy 217 

Telepathy, Failures and Successes . . . 296 

Telepathy, Series of Diagrams 298 

Testimony, Extraordinary, Not Un- 
reasonable 35-91 

Tests Exchange Among Mediums. ... 76 



" Things Worth While " 208 

Vibrations, Crookes' Table 518 

Voice Heard by Doctor at Distance ..315 
Voice of Drowning Boy Heard Thou- 
sands of Miles 316 

Voltaire on Newton 112 

Wagnalls', A. W., Statement About 

" Mite" 167 

Wallace, Alfred Russel, Clairvoyance 272 

Wallace Denies Recantation 156 

Wallace's Experiments at Home 364 

Wallace Tells of Effects of Ghosts on 

Animals 398 

Wallace Losing Patience 274 

Warning, Unspoken 267 

Watch, Finding of, Through Spirit. . igS 

Watch, Stolen, Returned 273 

" Watseka Wonder " 408 

West, C. W., Statement of 167 

West, Prof. Charles E 163 

" Widow's Mite," Finding of, Inci- 
dent 158 

" Widow's Mite," How Used 160 

" Widow's Mite " Submitted to Psy- 
chologists 176-493 

" Widow's Mite," Value of 168 

" Widow's Mite," Where Found 162 

Wills, Rev. Dr. J.T,, Himself Secures 

Photographs 463 

Wit, Beecherian 184 

Witch of Endor 71 

Wright, Silas, " Spirit of " 203 

Zeitgeist 95 

Zeitgeist and the Bible Prophets 97 

ZoUner, Coins Read in Sealed Box.. . . 279 

Zollner Doubly Surprised 280 

ZoUner Experiments with Endless 

Bands 359 

Zollner Grossly Abused 275-361 

Zollner, Leipsic University Corrects 

Slander about 276 

Zollner Makes Careful Tests 371 

Zollner 'sUnfortunate Omission 376 

Zollner Puzzles Scientists 375 

Zollner Secures Print on Sooted 

Paper 430 

Zollner Sees Immense Force 349 

Zollner Sees Phantom Hand 427 

Zollner Sees Table Disappear 362 



**This Book Has Afforded Me Great 
Pleasure." — Tolstoy 

Count Leo Tolstoy : " The idea of joining in this book the 
scientific truth of evolution and the coming of Christ (through a rein- 
carnation in men) is rich in application. The reading of this book has 
afforded me great pleasure." 



The Next Step in Evolution 

BY 

I. K. FUNK, D.D., LL.D. 



Price, Fifty Cents, Cloth 



**An Arsenal of Epigrams** 

Edtvin Markhantf Author of "The Man With The Hoe," 
etc. : " This is a great little book — suggestive and inspiring. It has a 
clarity, brevity, and poetry seldom found in books dealing with the 
deeper problems of life and thought. The book is an arsenal of epi- 
grams that sing home like bullets. It ought to become a little religious 
classic. I feel very close to this author in his vision of the historic 
march." 

"A Great Book" 

Philip S, Moxom, D.D., Springfield, Mass. : "A great book. 
Its deep spirituality, its breadth of view, its scientific temper and meth- 
od, all commend it to me with unusual force. I shall read passages of 
the book to my class (a Biblical Seminar) next Sunday. I shall speak 
of the book to my friends as one which they ought to know." 

"A Striking Little Volume** 

St, James's Gazette, London: "The religious idea is pre- 
sented with great grasp of the undeniable facts of life, and a sound 
degree of critical sanity. A striking Uttle volume." 

"A Distinctly Great Work" 

The A^rena, Boston : " An excellent companion volume to ' The 
Ascent of Man,' by Professor Drummond. Both works are calculated 
to appeal with convincing force to the reason of tens of thousands of 
naturally religious persons who have accepted the theory of evolution, 
and who, because they could find no rational reconciliation between it 
and the claims of theologians have drifted from the old-time moorings 
into the sea of agnosticism. 'The Next Step in Evolution' is a dis- 
tmctly great work and a very important contribution to modem thought." 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 

NEW YORK LONDON 



The Next Step in Evolution — Continued 



" It Contains the Thought of Ages 

Past — Germs of Truth for 

Ages to Come" 

JPMlctdelphia Telegraph : " A wonderful work, comprising 
the condensed essence of all the recent discoveries and inspirations as 
to evolution, both material and spiritual. . . . Just a handful of printed 
paper, yet it contains the result of the thoughts of ages past and the germ 
of truths to be seen in ages to come. As the first tiny arbutus blossom, 
peeping out from under the accumulations of vegetable mold, is a har- 
binger of a new season, a signal that spring has come, so this bit of a 
booklet is a sign to all men of a new era, an emblem of things to come, 
an epitome of the past and a promise for the future. 

" It is peculiarly fitting and appropriate just now, coming as it does 
on the instant of such shocking, horrible revelations of hideous atroci- 
ties against the Jews in Russia. It throws a Divine light on that dark- 
ness and reveals in a measure the I>ivine purpose in permitting such 
apparently Godless cruelties. All existence is evolution, and all expe- 
riences are merely necessary steps or stages in that evolution. Disas- 
ters and sufferings are the inevitable accompaniment to the eternal 
struggle to progress The same laws hold good for the spiritual as for 
the material world. There must be struggles ; there must be obstacles ; 
there must be resistance to push against, or there can be no progress. 
Dr. Funk says : ' In the lower kingdoms it is a survival of the fittest; the 
struggle for life for ourselves merging into a struggle for life for others.' 

" As to the next step in evolution, the development of the Christ- 
type, the author says : ' Christ came the first time into men's vision by 
coming on the plane of their senses ; He comes the second time into 
men's vision by lifting them up to His plane of spiritual comprehension.' 

" It is the spirit of Christ that is making itself felt in the world to-day, 
and just such shuddering convulsions of horror as the news from Russia 
has sent abroad are the birth-throes of the new spirit that will rise and 
spread for the salvation of humanity from their own inhumanity. Dr. 
Funk has studied like a true scientist, reasoned like a philosopher, felt 
like a poet, and now gives forth his utterance like a prophet, knowing 
his inspiration to have come from on High. His book is brief and to 
the point, simple enough for p child to understand, but deep as the pon- 
derings of any sage. It is a work that would inevitably make itself felt 
at any period, but just at this time it will be of especial power, and can 
not fail to appeal to all classes. Whether the reader agrees with it or 
not, he can not ignore it, for in its calm, quiet, dignified way it refuses 
to be ignored, and to many it will be the breath of a new life." 

"The Style is Fascinating" 

Kew Yorlc Observer : " The small pages are fuU of great 
thoughts, fresh and vitalizing insights into a host of familiar texts, and 
the style is fascinating." 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 

NEW YORK LONDON 



The Next Step in Evolution — Continued 



**An Astounding- liittle Book— Bound to 
Create a Stir" 

PhUddeVphia Item : «' This little book deals astoundingly with 
evolution, contradicting many established theories, but offering reason- 
able ones in their stead. They show deep thought and careful probing 
into the inner meanings of things, mentioning many famous preachers 
who have substantially taught the same ideas. It is bound to create a 
stir in the theological world." 

"Everybody Sliould Read It From Cover 
to Cover" 

tTohn G. Woolley, in " The New Voice," Chicago, III. . "... a 
wonderful little book. I should like to quote it all in this article. It 
ought to be read from cover to cover by every Sunday-School teacher, 
by everybody. It shows in a simple but masterly way what has been 
said in these comments repeatedly that the kingdoms of life pass into 
one another from lower to higher by resurrections, and that each of 
these successive steps or kingdoms has had its reform period or type 
Ufe." 

*'It Glows with Optimism** 

Western Cli/ristian Advocate, Cincinnati: " The little book 
is optimistic to the utmost verge of hopefulness. The author sees all 
the good things that are happening, and foresees many that are going to 
happen, and upon his visions he erects his picture of the good time 
coming." 

"Theme is Bold and Treatment 
Fearless** 

Providence Sunday Telegram : " It is a strong essay on 
the development of the soul, and while the theme is bold, the treatment 
is fearless. The writer's style is terse, vigorous and convincing; the 
reasoning, while along the plane of Christianity, is a radical departure 
from conventional thought." 

**A Remarkable Book** 

Ottawa Free Press : " This is one of the most interestmg 
contributions to the field of modern thought in the direction indicated 
by the title that has appeared for some time. It presents in words that 
can be understood by the most untutored mind a new phase of a much 
controverted subject. . . . The book must be carefully and thought- 
fully read as one of a rather remarkable kind." 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 

NEW YORK LONDON 



X' 



The Next Step in Evolution — Continued 

** Masterly and Keverential in Spirit" 

Dundee Courier, Dundee, Scotland: " It treats the subject in 
a masterly and reverential spirit, and brings much new light to bear on 
many of the dark problems of the world." 

** The Aptness of Statement is Remark- 
able"— "It Blazes With 
Common Sense" 

Uility, Chicago: "This little book is dropped on the table like 
mannaout of the skies ... is absolutely packed with passages that can be 
quoted as gems of thought. They are almost invariably right up to the 
line of modem progress. They startle and they inspire. The doctrine 
taught is that Christ is always coming in the process of evolution. The 
book will do infinite good in the way of curing orthodox reahsm — to use 
no harsher word. It ought to put higher conceptions into the minds of 
those who are still teaching that Jesus is to reappear in the flesh and re- 
peat his old life. The aptness of statement is remarkable. . . . You 
will make no mistake if you will buy this Uttle handbook, and put it in 
your pocket to read over and over again. It blazes with common sense 
and it consumes old-fogyism and bigotry without mercy." 

"Should Attract Thoughtful People 
Everywhere " 

Tlie Salt Lake Tribune. Salt Lake City, Utah : "It is a -work 
that should attract the attention of thoughtful people throughout the 
world." 

" Sug-gests Many New Avenues 
of Thought" 

St. Paul Dispatch : " The Uttle volume is interesting, novel, 
helpful, and full of hope and inspiration. It is logical and honest in its 
conclusions, and suggests many new avenues of thought on evolutionary 
lines." 

" Filled With Profound Truth " 

Cliristiau WorJc and Evangelist^ New York: "There is 
a profo\ind truth in this little book, which it will do us all good to pon- 
der." 

*' The Author's Enthusiasm Carries 

the Header" 

dlicago Cli/ronicle : " Naturally the tone of the book is hope- 
ful, and the author's enthusiasm carries the reader along with him. The 
little volume can be read in one hour." 

"Everybody Should Kead It" 

Boston Times : " It is a work which should be read by every- 
body." 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 

NEW YORK LONDON 



**A Splendid and Fascinating Historical 
Romance " 
Srooihlyn Eagle : " Nothing more graphic has ever burst from 
a red-hot inspiration. ... It never has a dull page. Is a gallery of 
wondrous pen pictures; it can be opened again and again. ... It is 
superfinely produced. . . . We commend it as one of the few works 
of fiction which deserves to be bought and placed on the permanent 
shelf." 



Tarry Thou Till I Come 

BY 

GEORGE CROLY 

Introduction by Gen. Lew Wallace 

Autlior of "Ben Hur" 

A thrilling story dealing with the momentous events that occurred in 
Palestine from the time of the crucifixion to the destruction of 
Jerusalem, replete with oriental charm and mar\'eIous character-draw- 
ing. 

"A Truly Great Novel" 

Edwin Markhani, Author of "The Man With The Hoe": 
" One of the greatest historical novels of the world." 

"It Is Sublime" 
Hubert H. Bancroft, the Celebrated Historian : " It is sub- 
lime. It occupies a unique place ; there is nothing else like it in litera- 
ture." 

" Fascinating " 

Senator Frye : "The legend itself is a fascinating one." 

"Without a Parallel" 
Watchword and Truth. Boston : " Its description of the life 
of Palestine up to the time when Jerusalem was destroyed is without a 
parallel in literature." 

"The Great Novel of the Age** 
Mugh Miller Tfiompson, Bishop of Mississippi : " It is the 
work of a scholar, a poet, a man of genius." 

" A Mighty Force For Good " 

S. Parkes Cadnian, D.JD., Brooklyn: " I believe such works 
arouse our interest in the living Christ and God." 

"Of Thrilling Interest" 
Geo. C Lorinier, D.D.: "The story is of thrilling interest." 

20 Full-Page Drawings, including a Beautiful Frontispiece in Colors, by 
T.de Thulstrup. izmo, Cloth, 622 Pages. Price, $1.40. Edition de Luxe, 
two volumes in box, 16 Photogravures. Price, $4.00. Carriage Prepaid 

FUNK Is WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 

NEW YORK LONDON 



" A Book That Will liive Forever '* 

JBookUtvers' Library Bulleti/n: "The intensity and majesty of this book are 
almost indescribable. It is a sweeping torrent in thoueht and expression — of passion, 
love, remorse, adventure, treachery, bloody conflict, madness, and portrayals of wonders 
in the heavens above and the earth beneath — the glorious imaginings of a lofty mind, at 
once philosophic and poetic." 



Tarry Thou Till I Come 

BV 

GEORGE CROLY 

Introduction by Gen. Lew Wallace 

Author of "Ben Hur" 

IN no other story have we so glowing and faithful a picture of that 
life in which Christ went to death, and the new Church took root, 
and the cataclasm in Jewish history came — the clash between Jew and 
Roman, in which the Jewish nation sank " as a continent sinks." Here 
we see the influences at work that molded the greatness of Jerusalem, 
and others that wrought her ruin. Here we witness the storms that beat 
out and scattered to the four comers of the world the seed of the new 
civilization which had been torn loose from " locality," and became a 
world civilization. In its pages we listen not only to the harsh notes 
of war, but to the precious music of the young heart of the Christian 
Church— ^in its first glorious century. 

"Among" the Greatest" 

Gen. Zietv WaUaee, Author of "Ben Hur" : "It is one of the six greatest 
English novels ever written." 

** One of the Nofolest Romances ** 

Hon. Ca/rroU D, Wright, U. S. Labor Commissioner, IVas/un^on D. C. : 
" It is one of the noblest romances I have ever read, and must stand with the very best 
literature that has been given to the world." 

" Ranks With the Greatest'* 

TJieo. W, Hunt, Ph.I)., Professor of English Language and Literature in 
Princeton University : " Parts of it remind me of the graphic pages of Victor Hugo in 
his ' Les Miserables ' and ' Ninety-Three,' and parts of it of the scenic chapters of Sien- 
kievncz in his ' Quo Vadis.' Here and there one is reminded of our American Haw- 
thorne." 

** Inspires a Ijove for Things Sacred" 

Vrof. H. W. Coiin, Weslej'an University, Middlctomn, Conn.: "One of the 
great books of English fiction. A book of much higher character tlian the ordinary line 
of iiction, the reading of which can not fail to be of great profit as well as entertainment." 

" The Foremost Historical Novel " 

N. Y. McmI and Express : " It leads the procession of historical novels at one 
bound." 

20 Full-Page Drawings, including a Beatitiful Frontispiece in Colors, by 
T.de Thulst7'up. i2mo. Cloth, 622 Pages. Price, $1.40. Edition de Luxe, 
two volumes in box, 16 Photogravures. Price, $4.00. Carriage Prepaid 



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